Thad being Thad

Ok so it seems THE Ohio State coach Thad Matta made a quick phone call to a respected TOSU alum last week in preparation for his game against Indiana. It was none other than former IU coach Bob Knight. Matta, who has a team that can make it to Houston the first weekend of April for the Final Four, needed a way to get his team to pick up the intensity to play defense. The general basically had him implore an old trick of having the starters only play four on defense against five. Seems to have worked as the Buckeyes pretty much had their way with the Hoosiers for pretty much the entire game.

What stuck in the crawl of current Indiana coach Tom Crean was the fact Matta had an enlightening conversation with the officials as everyone went to the locker rooms for halftime. First rule I learned as coach from Dick Harmening, if you see the other coach going to the officials get your butt over there and see what's about and listen. Don't say anything just listen to what he says so you can go into the locker room make the proper adjustment and be ready for what could come in the second half.

Of course when I used coach I called on coach Harmening on many occasions just like Matta did and just like Knight told Matta, Harmening told me "Don't tell anyone we talked." Of course it was kind of hard for my opponents not to notice since I came out with some type of variation of a junk defense from the Harmening playbook and he was up in the stands making sure I was properly doing it to his instructions.

Was Knight trying to help TOSU beat Indiana? Well guess you can say because of course Knight knew the Bucks were playing the Hoosiers this week. Then again maybe Matta really wanted to get his team to pick up the defense and begin that with its game against Indiana before heading into the final week of the regular Big 1(1)0 season with the conference championship still hanging in the balance.

Even in the later years of Knight's tenure at IU highly touted classes which were supposed to keep Knight in good with the higher ups of the university and win a couple more national championships miserably failed to get the job done. That could very easily happen with the dream recruits Crean has coming in the next four years.

Some have said this was a cheap shot by Matta to get one over on Crean. Look college basketball and the recruiting wars is a big-time business. You gotta do what you gotta do to stay ahead of the game. I remember as a salesperson always wanting to take the high road when my competition came in bad mouth me, but sometimes the gloves have to come off and do what you have to do to get the business. That might be the case here and well sometimes when a program is down like Indiana's is right now, you got take every opportunity to kick them and keep them down when you can.