Thad Matta is returning to Ohio State university according to Yahoo.com’s Pat Forde.
There had been a lot of speculation that Matta’s health would cause him to step down, however, Forde indicates that is not the case and the OSU job will not open up.
So why is this on an NC State site? Well, because it could directly affect NC State and their coaching search. See, as you know, Archie Miller is NC State’s top candidate. Archie is currently coaching at Dayton (Ohio) and grew up in western Pennsylvania. It’s safe to say that he has a lot of ties to that area as well as Thad Matta himself (he was an assistant under him.) We’ve also been told that OSU is Miller’s dream job and if it opens, you can bet he’s taking it. But now that we know Matta is not leaving, what will Archie do?
Archie obviously will listen to an NC State offer, but will he take it? Even if Ohio St is likely out of the question, there is still the chance that he just stays put at Dayton and waits for that job to open. But that would be taking a risk. Miller has a senior-heavy team right now, and that group has been responsible for a lot of the success he’s had at Dayton. With them gone, will he be able to keep up the winning, or will he have to rebuild? One or two down seasons of retooling a roster could turn a rising star into an afterthought in the coaching game. So Archie has a pretty interesting decision to make.
We’ve talked with a source close to Archie who assured us that Miller knew that NC State was interested and that he honestly has not made a decision about his future (although he does have a lot of old Wolfpack friends in his ear.) That was before the Matta news broke last night and I’m sure that has to be some sort of factor in the decision-making process.
Note that Miller’s wife’s family is still in the area and they are both NC State grads with heavy contacts in Raleigh. The Matta news should definitely be good if you’re an NC State fan, but it doesn’t guarantee anything.
Gott was taking the high road until that interview recently where he was in disbelief that he was fired. We gave that idiot a chance when no one else would and made him the highest paid employee in the state and this is how he thanks us? Back to back losing seasons and he’s in disbelief? Unbelievable.
Next season’s roster will be interesting to see. Obviously we will have a few leave early, at least one graduate, and possibly transfers. I wouldn’t be mad if we were able to start with this lineup next season: Markell, Maverick, Kirk, Kapita, Freeman. With CorchJr, Newman, Hicks, Yurt7 coming off the bench.
What about Dorn?
Not sure he’s coming back. But then he already transferred once so likely won’t want to sit out another year. Just didn’t like the decision making from him this season. Not sure if it was just how he plays or poor coaching? New coach will have to figure out who he wants and doesn’t want coming back.
One guy goes 5-15 and the other 3-12. Guess it was a poor attempt at raising their draft stock. Maybe distributing the ball and trying to play the right way would have been more beneficial?
I’m old but I play better defense than DSJ. Glad he is gone.
I still struggle with that. I’ve seen him early in the season play high level defense. So I know he is capable. It could be that at a certain point he knew the team wasn’t going anywhere so he packed it in. In his defense there’s no need to injure yourself and ruin your draft stock if the team isn’t very good.
The very reason State should stay away from one and dones.
I think the right coach could integrate a one and done into a veteran lineup but on a poorly coached team like this it was always going to end this way.
This is unrelated but we are already out of the ACC tourney. Why oh why did Debbie allow him to stay the rest of the season? What did that accomplish? I mean I was reading a couple of days ago about Terry H. just ignoring Gott during a timeout and Gott standing in disbelief. He lost this team half way into the season, what kind of moron would allow him to finish as coach after firing him?
Why worry about the OSU position? I mean it will open up at some point in the future. If that job is so attractive wouldn’t Archie take it later on down the road? Whomever becomes the coach at State that guy needs to be fully invested. We need someone with Jimmy V’s passion for this job again.
Bruce Pearl.
Don’t get me wrong, I think he’s a really good coach and on the passion front there are few who can match him. But do we really want a coach that likes to party with college kids with his shirt off? That’s just asking for trouble.
You want kids to play hard for you? Join them, he did.
🙂