At last the Thad Five All-Stars were put to rest, losing demonstrably and without ever seriously threatening a Florida team that had only one five star recruit and nary an instant NBA lottery pick but much more of what makes for high IQ basketball and championship basketball teams: teamwork, defense, offensive cohesion, consistent effort, year-to-year player development, a recruiting strategy that eschews hype in favor of intelligent, balanced, longer viewing program design, and smart game coaching.
Repetition Repetition
Ohio State’s supremely athletic defense that proved so disruptive and deserves credit for stifling Georgetown’s well taught sets returned, predictably, to the intermittent pathology it had evidenced all season and gave up 40 and 44 points in each half to a team, though potent, that was far from unstoppable, having been held to 74 points by Purdue, 65 by Butler. The Buckeye team that exhibited lapses in defensive intensity on several occasions both in Big Ten play and in three of its preceding NCAA tournament games, including a 40 point second half explosion at the hands of 16-seed Central Connecticut State and a 49 point first half letdown against Tennessee, found that habits, especially bad ones, have a tendency to repeat.
A team with quickness all over the floor, a team that was more than capable of playing forty minutes of Big Ten ball hawking, lockdown defense picked the wrong occasion to turn off its spigot. Or, if the problem wasn’t effort related, it reflects poorly on Matta’s ability to make the kind of adjustments, ones Matt Painter and Todd Lickliter had no trouble discovering, that could at least temper Florida’s offensive explosiveness. It is clear Donovan may have burned some video of the Buckeyes’ Big Ten tournament game against Purdue. Like Carl Landry in Chicago, Monday night found Al Horford pulling Oden away from the basket and sticking midrange jumpers or finding teammates slashing or able to dribble drive to a basket absent of Oden’s long arms.
Matta’s Offense
Another significant explanation for the Gator output can be found on Ohio State’s offensive end where their bevy of long shots and misses (4-23 3-pt. FG) produced countless long rebounds and transition opportunities for Florida. Furthermore, the Buckeyes tendency to play to whatever style and pace the opponent imposes rather than the alternative created a game Monday night that was paced favorably for the deeper, eager to run Gators. Purdue and Butler, by contrast, did a much better job slowing tempo with more disciplined offensive sets and unwavering, intelligent defense.
Ohio State’s lack of offensive cohesion and structure, a problem that had often been bailed out by timely perimeter shooting in many games this season was exposed for what it is: under coached, undisciplined, and overly reliant on one-on-one playmaking. Except for the Oden low block scoring there was no other reliable offense to be found. Faced with an athletic, aggressive Florida defense the Buckeye perimeter game was confused and impotent.
Ohio State had the look of a team that was never coached into a balanced, five man offensive philosophy where all parts, inside and out, fed each other profitably. Instead it was either/or offense. Either it was Oden or it was loose dribbling or slashing by one player acting independently or dithering around the perimeter for ill advised long shots. Much of the second half offense, especially in the late stretches of the game, was conducted almost exclusively by Oden and Conley, Jr. While they did their best to to resurrect their glory days at Lawrence North, without a well coached system to get all five players integrated and productive, it wasn’t enough.
Florida by contrast played five man, smartly executed offense and got much cleaner looks at the basket. The Gators were also much more discriminating about when and where (with the exception of two Corey Brewer launches) it took its threes and predictably shot a much higher percentage (10-18) from downtown.
Questions About Identity
Hoopraker witnessed Ohio State in person three times in Chicago and each time walked to the parking lot with the same uneasy feeling and/or confusion about their team identity. Other than their talent, quickness and a Big Ten filled mostly with teams in process, teams still a year or a piece or two away from full fruition, what defined their success? It certainly didn’t appear to be passion or high level coaching strategy. The Buckeyes played with a bloodless, clinical remove not unlike that found in many of the duller outposts on the NBA landscape. One often wondered if the preponderance of Buckeyes even enjoyed playing college basketball or was it already some kind of pre-corporate exercise in value maximization?
And there was seldom great evidence of a coach who was doing much more than caffeinated, gum killing motivation. Beyond the cheerleader, recruiting aspects of the profession what was Matta doing to render his success? He had once again produced a gaudy win total and a Big Ten Championship, but Hoopraker struggled to identify in Matta’s team the kind of strategic imprint and indelible identity that are hallmarks of strongly coached ballclubs and Big Ten champions.
Conversely, when Hoopraker watched Michigan State’s intelligent execution on offense, it’s chest pumping pride in defense, Purdue’s physicality, intensity, and smart use of Landry, Teague, and a host of role players, Wisconsin’s crisp passing and patient pursuit of high percentage shots there was no such confusion about coaching and identity. Even watching Spencer Tollackson and Dan Coleman run offense provided ample, extremely satisfying evidence of well taught, intelligent basketball. Northwestern’s tempo controlling, good look every trip system, Illinois defense, Indiana defense. These kind of unambiguous identities abounded and were clear reflections of their respective head coaches. The few programs in the conference where team identities were inconsistent, or seemingly non-existent - Alford’s Iowa, Amaker’s Michigan, this season’s Penn State squad under DeChellis - had poor to middling results.
The question becomes, while the results are sterling, what is the Ohio State identity under Matta? His recruiting puts peerless athletes on the floor, so there is athleticism first and foremost. He seems also to be maximizing his overall team jumpshooting. So he has athletes who shoot well. And to these sharpshooting athletes he grants a lot of freedom to make decisions. From here the picture gets blurry, the identity shaky, inconsistent, fickle. Sometimes these decisions mean an NBA lottery pick like Greg Oden fails to touch the ball for long stretches, sometimes it means he gets the ball plenty as he did Monday night. Many times the shots fall, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes the players defend well, sometimes they get too gleeful about their offense and forget to defend. Sometimes the team plays with intensity, sometimes it does not.
Playing Down
As a rule Matta’s teams play to the competition whether that is a team as roster poor as Penn State or Northwestern or height challenged and undisciplined as Tennessee. As it has been posited earlier, whatever the opponent brings as far as tempo and style of play prevails and the Buckeyes accommodate and do just enough to win. Seldom if ever does Matta’s team, even in victories against high quality foes like Georgetown, impose it’s identity on the game, on the opponent. It was a Georgetown paced game from start to finish. The Buckeyes won because they made a few more defensive stops and buckets not because they imposed their identity on the Hoyas.
It starts to become apparent that, other than blue chip athleticism, above average jumpshooting, and player freedom, Matta’s teams do not have an overriding, consistent identity to impose. They win a lot of games, who cares about identity? The problem is that in their reactive-ness, in their lack of a night in night out identity Matta’s Buckeyes have an over reliance on talent and shooting percentage. While their talent is often enough to beat the average foe and the talent often combines with good shooting to beat above average teams, against the best teams the talent advantage is often negligible and the jumpshots have a tendency to tighten. Florida’s talent, while not NBA lottery on arrival level, was nearly equal to and more experienced than that of the Buckeyes. The freedom to make decisions resulted in too much individual play and ill advised shooting. The jumpshots tightened. Ballgame.
Again the apologists will point to the thirty-five wins and a Final Four and trumpet Matta as one of the best in the business. Certainly as long as he continues to recruit nothing but five star recruits every year the victories will continue to accrue. But without a system or identity to support his teams through the toughest games when their talent and shooting aren’t enough, Matta will continue to lose the big games and will struggle against the elite teams and play down to lesser teams.
Even with two lottery picks he went 0-3 against North Carolina and Florida. Wisconsin before the Butch injury also soundly beat the Buckeyes. Without the lottery picks the regular season upset bids by Michigan State, Tennessee, Penn State, and Wisconsin become losses. Without a glaring no-call ninth seeded Xavier sends them packing in the NCAA second round for the second straight year. In the end, even with a roster of unparalleled, markedly upgraded talent from the season prior Matta needed pure dumb luck to improve on his 2006 result. This fact should should not sit well with fans of Buckeye basketball.
Last Rites For Thad Five
Hoopraker’s season long criticism of troubling Buckeye tendencies proved prescient and fatefully accurate in a game of highest stakes. And the result is that Thad Matta enters the Mike Davis category, a coach of questionable strategic acumen who made it to National Runner-Up despite himself. In fact, Davis deserves more credit as he did it with considerably less talent. Suffice to say, Matta better keep recruiting to mask his deficiencies. As Florida’s best tournament foes were coached by conference rival Matt Painter and rival-to-be Todd Lickliter, and Tom Izzo appears primed for a Final Four run next season, the Big Ten will be just as unforgiving of these deficiencies as the NCAA tournament.
In the final analysis, a Buckeye team that was recruited by any objective standard for a quick, one year rush for an NCAA title is left with a failure to achieve it’s only goal. What remains in the aftermath is a program that was hijacked by a coach’s expedient glory hunting and faces a host of questions and the sure exodus of its best players after only one year. A new batch of blue chippers arrive in the fall and the cycle repeats. Those who pledge allegiance to Matta’s vision of Buckeye basketball will continue to get a lot of wins, but the overall feeling could often be as empty as it should’ve been on March 17 and was on April 3.
