San Antonio – Please, stop all the accolades for Ohio State coach Thad Matta. Yeah, sure, he turned around Ohio State basketball from probation to the Final Four in only three years. Yes, he signed Greg Oden and met all the universe’s lofty expectations despite Oden playing half the year with virtually one hand. But Matta does have his faults.
He never recruited Ron Lewis.
“I’m embarrassed to say we didn’t,” he said during last week’s South Regional at the Alamodome. “I don’t know, but a couple of coaches lost their jobs over that.”
Matta smiled when he said it. No coach anywhere lost his job for overlooking Lewis out of high school. No, when Lewis came out of high school, he was not the shooting machine and inspirational backbone who has shined this month inside Oden’s huge shadow.
Believe it or not, Lewis, who has led the 34-3 Buckeyes with 24.7 points per game in his past three NCAA Tournament games and into Saturday’s Final Four against Georgetown (30-6), didn’t even start as a high school senior. Keep in mind, however, he played on one of the great high school teams in Ohio prep annals, Brookhaven High in Columbus.
He played with Jamelle Cornley, now Penn State’s second-leading scorer; Drew Lavender, Xavier’s star point guard; and forward Brandon Foust, a top-25 player who signed with Oklahoma. Lewis played the humble sixth man on a team that went 27-1 and won the 2002 Ohio state title. Still, coming off the bench, Lewis averaged 19 points and 10 rebounds and made first-team all-state.
If anyone was interested in him by then, it was too bad, too late. He had signed that fall with Bowling Green.
“I made my decision early, in my junior year,” Lewis said. “I made plans to go there. Obviously, I got better my senior year and it made it kind of hard for me to switch schools at that time.”
But Bowling Green? Bowling Green basketball has been nothing but fine print in the sports section for nearly half a century. Its last NCAA Tournament appearance was 1968 when the coach was a guy named Bill Fitch.
“He was viewed as kind of a tweener and people didn’t know exactly what to do with him,” Brookhaven assistant coach Andrew Williams said. “On one scale, small Division I schools thought they had a shot at him and higher Division I schools had question marks.”
With only Seton Hall showing interest, Lewis went off to Bowling Green and became a star. He was the Mid-American Conference’s top scoring freshman at 12.1 points per game and became second-team all-MAC his sophomore year, averaging 17 ppg.
But he didn’t help the Falcons fly high as they went 13-16 and 14-17.
“I wanted to go to a winning program,” Lewis said. “With me able to come under Thad Matta with all his success was just great for me and being back home was great as well.”
So despite being on pace to become Bowling Green’s all-time leading scorer, Lewis skipped back home after the 2004 season.
“We were like, ‘Oh, who is this kid? He plays at Bowling Green,”‘ Matta said. “I think we had some tape.”
Matta had just arrived from Xavier and his predecessor, Jim O’Brien, had lost too many recruiting battles, as Matta said, “(Lewis) didn’t have to sell very hard because we didn’t have very many players. We needed to fill scholarships. We were like if he can walk and chew gum, we’ll take him.”
Lewis spent his redshirt year working on his shot and scrapping on the scout team. Last season he came off the bench to average 11.2 points a game and helped ease the waiting period this season while Oden recovered from wrist surgery.
Lewis, a senior, averaged a respectable 11.3 ppg heading into postseason but in March he has been simply unconscious. He saved Ohio State with a buzzer-beating 3-pointer to send the second-round game against Xavier into overtime. He scored 25 in the comeback win over Tennessee and then 22 in the Elite Eight win over Memphis.
Lewis, who has his degree, is two wins from bringing his hometown team its first national title since 1960.
“I’m just being aggressive,” Lewis said. “With me being aggressive it’s just making shots easier for me and helping our team out. Teams weren’t really scouting and as focused on me as Greg.”
Added Matta: “One of the things we talk about in our program, the more you give, the more that will come back to you. And probably about a month ago I started to notice Ron really taking personal responsibility, and the little things that he’s done in timeouts or in the locker room or in practice have been tremendous.”
John Henderson can be reached at 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com.
