This past season, Ohio State was hit hard by transfers as four of five members of a celebrated Class of 2015 recruiting haul ended up leaving the Buckeyes by the summer.
Thad Matta seems okay with the transfers.
In a video taken at a golf outing on July 11 from ThisWeek Sports, Matta doesn’t mince words when talking about some of the players who have left the Ohio State program this offseason. Matta doesn’t call out anyone in particular, but he seems fired up about how everything went down.
Here’s the video:
OSU hoops coach Thad Matta talks about his team during the Joe Mortellaro Golf Classic on July 11 at Scioto Reserve. pic.twitter.com/AyPgFRchfy
— Columbus Dispatch Preps (@DispatchPreps) July 14, 2016
I like the guys we’ve got in here. We’re going through a transition where we lost three guys. After the Florida game this year, I told our guys two things after the game.
Number one, I’m tired of the B.S. I’m going back to coaching basketball. I’m going back to running this program the way we did when we got here.
The second thing is, some of you are going to transfer. You don’t know it yet, but whatever you do—don’t come see me. Just shoot me a text, because I’m tired of looking at you.
And we got rid of some guys we needed to get rid of. We got rid of problems, but we kept solutions...
While talented guard JaQuan Lyle is returning to Ohio State this year, Mickey Mitchell, Austin Grandstaff, A.J. Harris and Daniel Giddens all left the Buckeyes to pursue basketball opportunities elsewhere as it has left Ohio State with some question marks going forward.
Although it was clear some of those players probably weren’t going to be major contributors in the Big Ten, Giddens and Grandstaff have transferred to other power conference schools and are expected to be contributors once they finish sitting out.
Ohio State will return most of the key pieces from last year’s team, but their depth definitely took a hit with those transfers. It’ll be interesting to see if the locker room, and the team, improves with the departures of some of these transfers, but I can’t recall a major head coach saying something like this about players transferring from his program in quite some time.
(H/t: Land-Grant Holy Land)