Before accepting the Ohio State head coaching job last summer, Thad Matta was just a humble, small-town guy who loved basketball.

In many ways, he hasn’t changed one bit.

For all his coaching success — a Naismith finalist for Coach of the Year in 2003 and a 24-8 record in his first season at Butler in 2001 — Matta remains modest about his accomplishments.

“I consider myself the luckiest guy in the world,” he said about getting the Buckeyes job.

Actually, Ohio State probably got the better deal.

A tumultuous 2003-04 season ended with the Buckeyes missing the postseason for the first time in six years. Worse, coach Jim O’Brien was fired after the season for allegedly giving money to a recruit’s family. Consequently, the school implemented self-imposed sanctions, including exclusion from postseason play this year.

Enter Matta, who in four years of coaching compiled a 102-31 record. He won conference coach of the year honors at Butler in 2001, then posted three straight 26-win seasons at Xavier.

The Musketeers, as a No. 7 seed, reached the Elite Eight in 2004 before losing 66-63 to Duke. It was the deepest the team had ever gone in the NCAA Tournament.

“There were only one or two jobs that I might have left Xavier for, and Ohio State was one of those,” Matta said. “When the opportunity presented itself, I took a long hard look at it.”

On July 9, Ohio State announced Matta as the 13th head coach in school history.

“The game is a way of life, the game of basketball,” Buckeyes Athletic Director Andy Geiger said at the press conference. “And we certainly have somebody with those characteristics.”

Geiger may not have known how right he was.

BASKETBALL AS LIFE

If anything, Hoopeston, Ill., was a basketball town.

Twenty years ago, before video games and the World Wide Web gave folks alternative forms of entertainment, hoops was king — and the Mattas had at least a share of the crown.

Matta’s dad, Jim, was the athletic director of the town’s only high school for 33 years before retiring in 2000.

Sports, as it is in many small communities, were part of Hoopeston’s (pronounced “Hopes-ton,” after the founder) culture. In an old-time tradition that transcends city sizes, Jim took his sons to basketball games and noticed how Thad would study the players and their moves.

“He just loves he game,” Jim said.

Matta also worked on his skills. Even when no one accompanied him, he’d grab the keys to the gym — one of the luxuries of being a coach’s son — and go himself.

In high school, Matta’s teammates saw in him the leadership, determination and basketball IQ that would launch him into coaching.

“He let his play do a lot of the talking, but he would be pretty vocal to us if he needed to be,” said Kevin Root, Matta’s teammate for three years and the current Cornjerkers coach. “You could tell he had coaching in his blood.”

Of course, it wasn’t just the prep scene that attracted attention. The eastern Illinois town of 6,000, situated at the heart of America’s Corn Belt, had a steady hand on the Big Ten pulse. To the southwest was Lon Kruger’s Fighting Illini; to the east, Gene Keady’s Boilermakers; and to the southeast, Bobby Knight’s Hoosiers.

With this backdrop, Matta found his vocation.

“I wanted to grow up and be my dad,” he said. “My goal in life was to be a high school coach and build a program. Honestly, I wanted to do it in Hoopeston, but then college kind of broadened my horizons and I thought, ‘What the heck, I’ll give this college profession a try.'”

Like dad, he arrived early and left late.

With two young daughters at home, the 37-year-old Matta is taking it a little easier — but not much.

Root, the old teammate, sums it up: “He’s trying to outwork everybody in Division I.”

THE TEAM

Matta brought his work ethic to Ohio State (13-7, 2-4 Big Ten), putting his new team through early practices while installing his system of basketball, which emphasizes defense. After 13 games, it looked like it was paying off.

Ohio State won 11 of its first 13, including a 77-71 victory against Bobby Knight’s Texas Tech squad in a nationally televised game.

Matta said he’ll continue to push, even without the hope of a postseason.

“(Coach Matta) came in and said, ‘We’re playing for pride now,'” Ohio State junior Terence Dials said. “He said make sure when the season’s over you don’t have any regrets.”

Reach Anthony Tao at [email protected].