CHICAGO — As a room full of reporters swarmed around players like Maryland’s Melo Trimble, Indiana’s Yogi Ferrell and Michigan’s Caris LeVert on Thursday at Big Ten media day, Ohio State’s Jae’Sean Tate and Marc Loving sat quietly at their table tucked away in the back right corner of the room with space to sit back and stretch their legs.
The focus was hardly on them, and that seems to be how it’s going to be for the 2015-16 version of the Buckeyes.
“I don’t think we really pay attention to it, but it’s definitely in the back of your head because you hear about it all the time,” Tate said of the lack of attention Ohio State is receiving this year. “People just don’t know; they haven’t seen what we have. I feel like we’ll be a sleeper team because I feel like this team is very good. We’re very athletic and we’re very close.”
After solidifying itself as one of the Big Ten’s most consistent programs under now 12th-year head coach Thad Matta, Ohio State often finds itself near the top of the league’s preseason projections. In 2015-16, however, that’s hardly the case. Most projections have the Buckeyes finishing somewhere in the middle of the pack in the Big Ten.
People aren’t expecting much from this year’s version of Ohio State because, frankly, there are so many unknowns. The Buckeyes will feature seven players who have never suited up in an Ohio State uniform and return just four guys in their rotation from a year ago — only one of which, Tate, finished the year as a starter.
But Matta kind of likes it that way. He doesn’t mind the lack of attention.
“Quite honestly, I sort of like it. I’m a very low-key guy, this is as draining of a day for me as it can possibly be in terms of dealing with the media, all that stuff,” Matta said. “I like the fact that people don’t really know a whole lot about Ohio State. I think that has been a good focal point for our guys in terms of not being mentioned and knowing that the only way to change the perception is go out and prove yourself.”
It’s obvious when talking about this year’s Ohio State team you must first start with the replacement of superstar D’Angelo Russell, the do-everything guard who left after his freshman season and was selected No. 2 overall in the NBA Draft by the Los Angeles Lakers. But the Buckeyes also lost a four-man senior class (five if you include graduate transfer Anthony Lee), which included three starters.
That’s not easy for any team to deal with, and perhaps nobody knows that better than Michigan State coach Tom Izzo.
Izzo went through a similar situation to Matta last year when the Spartans lost high-caliber players Keith Appling, Gary Harris and Adreian Payne prior to the 2014-15 season. There weren’t the same sky-high expectations surrounding Michigan State last year because of that, and after a somewhat up-and-down regular season, the Spartans found themselves in the Final Four.
To predict that amount of success for this year’s Ohio State team would be insane; there is still so much unknown to even gauge whether or not the Buckeyes will make the NCAA tournament. But the point is Izzo enjoyed not having others expect much of his team much like Matta is enduring this season.
“[Matta] has done great things with worse talent than he has now, I can guarantee that. I know some of his players because I recruited some of them,” Izzo said. “Little more unknown like we were a little more unknown last year. After losing all those guys the year before, that’s what happens. If you want me to feel sorry for Thad, I’m not going to do it because he’s beaten my brains in enough times, too. I think he’s a good enough coach that he’ll overcome it and he might even have more fun.”
Longtime Wisconsin coach Bo Ryan, who has coached against Matta throughout his entire tenure with the Buckeyes, also believes people would be somewhat foolish to count out Ohio State as a team that can make some noise in the Big Ten.
“With Ohio State, you’re preparing for a lot of factors,” Ryan said. “[Matta] has got talent. He’s got guys that can play the game.”
Maryland was tagged as the preseason favorite to win the Big Ten in 2015-16; Trimble was dubbed as the conference’s player of the year. On the 10-player preseason all-league team, seven different schools were represented.
Ohio State was not one of them.
Perhaps after years of high expectations, the change is somewhat enjoyable.
“As a team, we don’t really get too much into that. It’s still in the back of our heads, but we’re just trying to get better every single day,” Loving said. “We’re trying to build team chemistry and hopefully we won’t finish as most people have us.”
