Thad Matta was a very good (and possibly great) coach. He didn’t have as much NCAA tourney success as you’d think, but they dominated during the season. At one point he finished top 7 on KenPom four consecutive seasons (and made Sweet 16 or better each time). He got some run out of 1 and done players like BJ Mullens and Greg Oden and Kosta Koufos, but much of his success was due to guys like Craft and Buford and Diebler and Turner and Lighty that were not 5 star recruits.
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Diebler, Turner, and Lighty were top-40 recruits. And I didn’t mean to disparage Matta as a coach, only that the last generation of OSU basketball fans are accustomed to a different level of recruiting than the one Holtmann is currently bringing to the program. As @Scottwood mentioned they’re in the final group for several big names so we’ll see what Holtmann does next.
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I don’t think that’s a fair assessment. He made a national title game, another Final Four, and another Elite Eight which is pretty similar to where Beilein landed in terms of NCAA success. His one title game appearance came in the Oden season, when he had 3 5 star freshmen (Oden, Cook and Conley). The other Final Four team was 2011-2012 and the team’s 3 leading scorers were Sullinger, Deshaun Thomas and Buford, who were all 5 stars.
Craft and Buford and Diebler and Turner and Lighty that were not 5 star recruits.
According to 247, Buford was a 5 star, Turner and Diebler were both top 50 players, and Lighty was a top 30ish player. Craft was the lowest of that group and still in the top 100.
Matta was a great coach at his peak who competed in the B1G most years, but competed nationally when he had elite talent. Holtmann hasn’t shown he’s near Matta’s level as a coach in on court success (Holtmann has made it to the second weekend once in his career and never won his conference at any stop, while Matta won his conference in the 1st or 2nd year at every stop and made the title game in year 3 at OSU) nor as a recruiter (Holtmann has never landed a 5 star to 247 and Lidell and Branham would be the only top 50 players on next year’s roster).
I don’t think Holtmann’s a bad coach by any means, and he clearly has OSU at a level where they’re a consistent tournament team who will spend time every season in the top 25. I don’t think as of now there’s any reason to believe he can do more than that.
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Matta had elite talent but I’d fight pretty hard at the argument that their identity was “rolling out the ball”. If you look at the post Salad Jullinger years, with Craft, DeShaun Thomas, Lenzelle Smith, etc, I’d say they were arguably the most recognizable stylistic team in the league - absolute viscous, overly aggressive defense. Even after Craft left and they really lacked any scoring you could count on them leaving blood and teeth on the floor.
In 2014 their offense was “led” by LaQuinton Ross, Lenzelle Smith, and Aaron Craft (it was bad) and they played murderous defense.
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Michigan got to #1 for one week but then lost that barnburner at Assembly where Oladipo dunked at the buzzer.
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let’s just call that phrase a poor choice of words then
Very fair to say that Matta is a much better recruiter than Holtmann. I like Holtmann as a coach and he may even be better than Matta there, but without the top end talent.
I do think Holtmann’s roster management has been strange. The reliance on transfers, the people in and out of the program just doesn’t seem like it will lead to sustained success. I don’t like this years team and that is with Lidell being very impressive in his growth.
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This is a great question. You can’t take away what they did this week and they are obviously better than the bottom tier team we thought. But there is a chance the teams they beat this week are just mid-tier B1G teams and quite possible none of them finish over .500 in the league. I know the “brand” names of MSU, OSU and Indiana are impressive but are THEY actually any good? Plus a fair amount of luck as the only team they really dominated was MSU.
Next 5 games: @ Iowa, @ M, vs. ILL, @ Ohio St., vs. Iowa. Again I’ve been really impressed with what they are doing but they could be 3-5 in a few weeks.
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Also, sometimes teams just got hot for a period. In 2018-2019 Illinois won 12 games total and 7 in the B1G, but they had one 4 game stretch where they went 4-0 and beat a top 10 MSU team and tournament OSU team.
That same season a 19-16 Indiana team that made the NIT ended the regular season 4-0 with wins over ranked MSU and Wisconsin.
In reality we don’t know how good NW is, nor do we actually know how good any of the teams they beat are. But that being said, they have 3 straight wins over top 30 teams to the computer rankings and they looked generally good when you watch them. We’ll see how good they actually end up being but at this point I think it’s safe to say they’re better than we all expected, look like they could be tourney good, and will probably be our toughest test so far when we play them on January 3rd.
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Well regardless of whether they’re actually good or not, I think it’ll be pretty unsurprising when Chris Collins gets a 25 year extension from being ranked. Such is Northwestern sports.
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So, is the hype on Aaron Henry as a latent star finally over? Have people finally come to realize that just because a guy makes a couple mid-range jumpers against LSU two years ago, it doesn’t mean he’s actually an amazingly skilled player?
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A question best answered in a podcast format, in my estimation.
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Pretty cool quote on Chaundee from Juwan here.
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People just mistakenly assume that players who possess obvious size, length, and athleticism can just develop the ability to take people off the dribble consistently. Being able to jump really high and being able to take someone off the dribble require different athletic skills. Expecting somebody who never demonstrated the ability to do so to suddenly develop the ability is a fools errand.
Or maybe he is that talented, but Izzo is putting him in terrible spots to make sure his draft stock tanks and he returns next season.
Yeah when I ask if NW is “good” I don’t mean conference title contender. But they seem to be far better than the worst/2nd worst (depending on who you ask) team in the conference. I’m on record that OSU is over-rated (they have 1 too 100 guy on the roster and not much experience) but beating them on the heels of Indiana and MSU (both talented at the very least) means we need to at least start seeing them as an actual test on the schedule…at least for now.
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Also, just asking, if Keita Bates-Diop doesn’t have what everything that came before and after suggests was a completely aberrant two months, what do we all think of Chris Holtmann as a coach?
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Still pretty damn good I think? TBD on this year, but has a pretty good resume at Butler and last year was pretty impressive despite a mid-year slump. Would take a bad year, this year and next for me to think of Holtmann as a possible candidate to be fired.
I doubt that
I didn’t say fired. He’s had two pretty mediocre years since he took over Matta’s roster and won lots of games his first year. His recruiting doesn’t really inspire right now. They’re #42 in the next incoming class. He got 3 top 100 kids last year and 2 (Carton and Gaffney) left. He had two the year before and one (JaDeon Lee) left. Without two Matta guys (Diop and Wesson), they look like a bottom dweller for his tenure.