Goo balls?
The Big Lettuce Torcher Bill Walton was in the news last week for comments he made about Thad Matta misusing Greg Oden.
Walton, appearing on ESPN Radio Friday morning, thought Matta didn't run enough of the attack through the big fella:
"I'm seeing Oden out there sort of standing around. You win in basketball when you attack."
And:
"[Oden is] the most under-utilized talent that I have ever seen in the college ranks."
As some of the commenters in the link above point out, Walton is probably only basing this evaluation on the few games he watched this season, but I also read a Tribune article (which I can't seem to find a link to) before the championship game that said NBA executives also thought that Matta had misused Oden this season -- saying that he wasn't being used to jump-start the break with passes from defensive rebounds. Of course, I watched for this in the championship game and he passed out to start breaks all night, so who knows.
I'm obviously pretty biased but I think Matta did a tremendous job of weaving a group of youngsters together with veterans and developing a game plan to beat each individual team that OSU played. Sure, we all wish Oden would have received some more passes into the post during the season, but it's still a team game and the team results speak pretty clearly.
What do you guys think? Did Matta misuse Oden this season?
Comments
I can only think of a few instances where it's possible Thad misused or under utilized the big man...best example is the first game against the Vols when he refused to use Oden to break the press until 20 turnovers finally motivated him to change course and have Oden receive the inbound lob the last 7 minutes...
You also have that whole period where the players themselves were learning to play with Oden in the post upon his return...at that time, it was the players under-utilizing him moreso than Matta...
Then, you have to factor in Oden's horrible game conditioning for the first month back plus his right hand was 50%, if that, from when he came back until about halfway through the conference schedule...I can see where Walton could come to his conclusion if he just saw highlights and box scores, but since I watched every game, I know his brain is just suffering from the smorgasboard of drugs he's consumed over the years.
I think you have to consider that he really couldn't catch with his right hand until February. Think about it, the first 2 months he played some of us wondered if we had anybody that could make an entry pass to the big man. Looking back, you can see where they were hesitant to throw it inside unless they were sure it would be on his left hand.
I think Matta could have used Oden better, but it's not like he squandered his talent or anything. Oden averaged near a double-double playing one-handed, the team got to the national championship game, and Matta kept the rest of the team relatively happy. Considering that Matta had upperclassmen and other highly-touted freshmen that probably would have been upset to have just been guys that passed to Greg, he did about as much as he could do with Oden.
I agree with Chris, there were only a few times that we under-utilized Oden and that was due to the players not getting him the ball and taking crazy three's without Oden touching it. As TLB stated Oden could not catch a hard thrown entry pass with his right hand until late Feb. making it difficult to have full offensive potential. I also truley believe that Oden is a very "team oriented" guy, who will not force anything and will pass the ball out of the post quite often. Also, Oden did not look comfortable in the first 15 or so games he played and at times would get the ball in the post and stand there, waiting to react to the defense, rather than forcing the action. I think everybody feels Oden should be this dominating offensive presence because he is 7', but he averaged 22 points his senior year in high school, which is not an astronomical average. Greg Oden has a lot to learn on the offensive end and I think that is being translated into under-utilization. Unfortunately Walton has been living on reds, vitamin C and cocaine and probably watched 3 or 4 games of Oden's. Don't forget the jealousy of UCLA not making it to the final game. However, I still believe Walton will get to see plenty of games next year when Oden wears the Scarlet and Gray for one more season.
Durant declared today...
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