TylerDurden wrote:rlh04d wrote:Wufan wrote:And Marty Simmons was better than Marshall in two games last year…Matta is pretty bad ass!
Winning a game doesn't say that the coach that wins is better by any means. But Marshall was clearly the better coach in that tournament game.
We had Ohio State scouted and we were very well prepared. We knew what distances to play guys like Craft at. We knew what pressure to put onto people. We shifted lineups to compensate for any move they made. Ohio State, from my perception, didn't scout us at all, and simply tried to out-talent us.
I guess you can argue how much of that was on our assistant coaches as well. But I was very unimpressed with Ohio State's preparation for an Elite 8 game. Maybe that's on the players for not taking the coach's game plan seriously -- but that's also on the coach to make his players buy in.
Let's pump the breaks just a bit here.
I understand you're a WSU and Marshall fan and this is an MVC forum, but to suggest that OSU and Matta didn't scout WSU and relied on its talent to win the game is silly. We're talking about a four-point game in the Elite 8. 70-66.
WSU just happened to outplay OSU in the first half more than OSU outplayed WSU in the second. Four points worth, to be exact. If Marshall clearly out-coached Matta in preparation/first-half, then Matta clearly out-coached Marshall from halftime on.
But really, there isn't anything clear about a four-point game.
I don't think anyone is denying that Marshall is a good coach and a lot of things point to him being in the top XX% of DI coaches. In fact, the points you make about WSU's preparation for games is very valid. They seem to be ready to go for just about every game. Credit where it's due there.
But just like you can't draw a lot of conclusions about a coach based on a couple of games against Evansville, you can't draw a conclusion about who you would take because of a four-point Elite 8 game.
How many 20+ point leads did Ohio State have in the game? WSU? How many double-digit leads did Ohio State have in the game? WSU? How many minutes of the game did OSU lead in the game? WSU?
WSU seemed to go a bit in prevent defense mode in the second half. That's not to say that Ohio State was making bigger strides in the second half as well, credit to them.
Just like you're trying to make the point of not getting deceived because it was a 4-point game. Well, look in the mirror. Because for the majority of that game, it was anything but a close game.
The NCAA's are where teams/coaches are judged. You may not like it, maybe because your team hasn't been there in a while?, but that's the way it is. In that game, Marshall did eat Matta alive. Matta is still a great coach, but head-to-head, Marshall has that one. And don't get me this "it's just 1 game" crap either. That's how we draw comparisons when players/teams/coaches play against each other. If the teams had not played each other, we could draw hypothetical analysis and speculate between the two. However, they did play each other. So now the cold, hard facts are sealed on an actual scorecard.
And of course, Wufan is here to make sure he lays down for the regular Valley fan, because that makes him look like a good, unbiased fan.