In a milestone game, Ohio State coach Thad Matta hardly saw a monumental effort from his team.
Despite a ragged second half, the 12th-ranked Buckeyes did enough to get past pesky Morehead State 87-71 Saturday.
Asked if it felt as if this was his 500th career game as a head coach, Matta cracked, “Yes, it does. Maybe a thousand.”
“We were sloppy. We weren’t as sharp as we needed to be, really at both ends. We did some things that would lead one to believe we weren’t as tuned in as we needed to be,” he said.
Matta is in his 15th season as a head coach, including a year at his alma mater, Butler, and three at Xavier. His record is 385-115, a .770 winning percentage. In his 11 years at Ohio State, the Buckeyes are 283-84 (.771) with five Big Ten regular-season crowns and four tournament championships.
D’Angelo Russell and Sam Thompson each scored 15 points for Ohio State (8-1).
Morehead State (4-8) shot 63 percent in the second half and outscored the Buckeyes while forcing 14 turnovers.
“He’s not too happy about that,” Thompson said of Matta. “First of all, Morehead State is really a good team. But we played a really good first half and we sort of let our guard down in the second half. We didn’t have that same type of energy and intensity and execution on both sides of the floor.”
Luckily for the Buckeyes, they had built a 19-point lead by halftime and had more than enough left over to fight off the Eagles when they cut the lead to 13 twice late in the game.
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