PROVIDENCE, R.I.--After Ohio's 97-83 victory over Georgetown in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, The Post's Vince Nairn and Rob Mixer caught up with Jim Schaus, Ohio Director of Athletics.
The Post: How does it feel to see a team succeed like this and to see Ohio win its first NCAA Tournament game since 1983?
Schaus: It's an incredible feeling. Success at any level is a team effort, so there's a lot of people that are involved in that. We've great coaches and assistant coaches, and the student-athletes did a tremendous job. It's not one thing. It's a lot of little things that John's done at practice that got the kids to buy in to their roles. Everybody accepts their roles. That's a really important thing in this sport. We're all playing together, we're playing as one player, and that's huge. It's a great accomplishment for Ohio University.
The Post: I feel like everybody on (Ohio's) side of the court thought Oh my God! Is this really a 19-point lead right now?Did you feel at halftime that this would happen?
Schaus: No. I was the most nervous person in the building. The philosophy that our team has and that I have is it's one game at a time. It's one possession at a time. Just make a stop, and get a good shot. So many things can happen. The teams that we're playing have such tremendous athletes that you can go from being up 12 to down 12 before you blink an eye. But I give our kids credit...It's just a great moment. It's certainly got to be one of the greatest moments in not only the basketball history, but in our athletic history.
The Post: Two years ago, when you made the decision to hire John Groce, is this what you envisioned?
Schaus: Maybe not this soon. I think that we thought we were going to maybe have a chance to compete for the conference championship maybe more like next year, as we were kind of scheduling and rebuilding the program. We're certainly probably ahead of the curve. John's an excellent recruiter. We have a lot of players coming back. So, it's exciting to look at the future of where this program is going. It's not about one season. It's about building the program.
The Post: This year, the basketball team had so much to go through - suspensions and a dismissal. It seemed like somehow coach Groce was able to keep them together. What does that say about the program?
Schaus: That was a very critical time, two-thirds of the way into the season. John was a tremendous leader. I think there were some issues where he set some discipline down, and levels of where our program would be, and out student-athletes responded...all of this is tremendous for Ohio University.
22 NCAA 2010
Vince Nairn
