The slogan heard and seen on promotions for the 08-09 Ohio men's basketball team read, "Ohio Basketball: Lights Out." Truthfully, the Bobcats were anything but. Despite having one of the top players in the MAC in Jerome Tillman, the team went 15-17, winning just twice on the road, and finished last in the MAC-East. You may wonder, then, why this average-to-bad team made my top ten. The answer is simple: head coach John Groce.
I remember interning at Sports Radio 1460 (now 97.1) in the summer of 2008 when A.D. Jim Schauss hired Groce to replace the always-inept Tim O'Shea as the head coach of the Ohio basketball team. I streamed the press conference that officially introduced him as the team's head coach and instantly fell in love with him and knew he would be great for the program. Not only did he have an impressive coaching resume (assisting Thad Matta at Ohio State, Xavier and Butler) and a reputation as one of the best recruiters in the country (he's the one who brought Greg Oden and Mike Conley Jr. to OSU), but after listening to the press conference you could tell how excited he was to be taking the job at Ohio and that he genuinely wanted to be there. You may be asking if I'm really naive enough to believe that he just wants to stay stay in Athens for a long time. I'm not. Is this job a stepping stone for Groce? Absolutely. I have no doubt that he will be receiving offers from some big-conference programs within the next couple years. And while this may be true, you wouldn't know it by listening to him talk about the Ohio program. You can tell that he is committed to building Ohio basketball up to a MAC championship contender. Near the end of that press conference I mentioned, he even shed a few tears when talking about how long he and his family had been waiting for this opportunity to take over a basketball program like Ohio's. That's commitment.
I would have been excited with Ohio's hiring of Groce under any circumstances, but the coaching change was particularly dramatic because of who he replaced. Tim O'Shea was a joke. End of story. If we had an archive of SportsBeat talk shows I was a part of while in Athens, there would be no shortage of segments dedicated to bashing the former Bobcat coach. He took Ohio to the NCAA Tournament in 2005, sure, but that was when Leon Williams was a freshman. For the rest of Leon's career, the Bobcats never even threatened to return to the dance. The 05-06 Bobcats were stacked: Williams, Tillman (named MAC Freshman of the Year that season), Jeremy Fears, Mychal Green, Sonny Troutman, Jeff Halbert (for three) and even Whitney Davis. Not only did O'Shea fail to win the MAC with this team, but he managed to get Fears to transfer to Bradley. He also had a nasty habit of sitting both Leon and Tillman at the same time, eliminating any kind of inside presence. If you have two of a conference's top big men on your roster, why would you not make sure one of them was always on the floor? Where Groce really makes O'Shea look like a fool, though, is during games. I found him to be one of the most approachable and genuine coaches I've even spoken to off the court, but his in-game intensity is unbelievable (see picture above). He is constantly barking out instructions to his players or getting in a referee's face about a call he didn't like. That's what the big-time coaches do to help themselves later in the game. With O'Shea, you got none of this. He rarely stood up during games or gave his players instruction. Mostly he just threw his hands up in the air with a confused look on his face.
I mentioned Groce's repuation as a great recruiter, and he's already lived up to it. During the 08-09 season he got Armon Bassett to transfer to Ohio from Indiana. He didn't sit the bench for the Hoosiers either...he was a third team All-Big Ten selection as a sophomore and will be a big addition to the team when he joins the Bobcats this January. He also brought in Alex Kellogg, a transfer from Providence, and an impressive 2009 recruiting class. Despite having Tillman, Groce's first team at Ohio was less-than-stellar. Now that he's getting his own players in the system, though, expect big things from him and the Bobcats. While the 08-09 team wasn't that great, I still loved watching and covering a lot its games, including road trips to Louisville, Akron and, of course, Cleveland for the MAC Tournament. I wish I could be around Athens to see the team's progress, but I'm glad I at least was there to witness the beginning of what should be a great career.
After the first two installments it may seem like this entire countdown will involve some kind of Ohio University twist. Let me assure you, it doesn't. In fact, the very next item has nothing at all to do with the state of Ohio at all.
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