"Ohio State is a football school."
Ohio State is also the school that's come the closest over the years to being a "football school and a basketball school". Michigan and Florida also have had success in both at times. It's damn hard to be good in either sport, let alone both, but it's attainable as history has shown.
OSU ranks 6th all-time in Final Fours. Since 1990 we rank 11th.
OSU ranks 2nd in Big Ten titles with 22. 1/3 of those have come since the year 2000.
OSU has finished atop the AP poll in football 6x - they've done it in basketball 4x, including two occasions since 2000. Those 4x put us atop the Big Ten and tied with Kansas for 5th all-time.
I'm not suggesting by any means that OSU basketball is in the realm of OSU football. Our football program has finished top 5 in the AP 33x compared to just 9x for basketball. Though we are second in conference titles in both, football has 40 compared to 22 for basketball. Not trying to compare the two. But what I am trying to say is that elite football doesn't mean you can't have very good basketball. Our football program is top 3 all-time; our basketball program is top 12 all-time.
But we've now gone 10 years without a Big Ten title, a BTT championship, or a Sweet 16. Since the NCAA tournament started in 1939, OSU had never gone more than 9 years without a Sweet 16. Our current drought stands at 12.
The slide started with Matta's unfortunate health decline, right as he had us as a top 10 basketball staple.
Thad Matta and Ohio State "mutually agreed that he would step down" June 5, 2017 - nearly two months after the traditional window. ESPN even wrote about the disastrous timing and cited it as an example for other programs not to follow:
Athletic director Gene Smith and The Ohio State University provided a beautiful blueprint ... of what not to do when relieving a longtime coach of his responsibilities.
They're two months late.
https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/19552272/ohio-st...
Gene Smith's two top candidates to replace the 2nd greatest coach in the then 118-year history of Ohio State basketball and the coach who held the school record for victories, included Chris Holtmann and Greg McDermott. Holtmann had coached 3 seasons each at Gardner-Webb and Butler and had zero conference championships or conference tournament championships to his name. His 2016-17 Butler team SWEPT #1 Villanova, but still finished 3 games back of them as Butler lost four games to teams that finished 10-8 and also took bad losses to 7-11 St. John's and 5-13 Georgetown. Big wins but can't navigate the conference season...sounds familiar to what we got. His 2-seed Butler team was promptly dismissed in the Big East tournament by 7-10 Butler (also sounds familiar) but managed a S16 by beating a 13-seed and a 12-seed. That was his best season. Greg McDermott had just completed a 10-8 conference season at Creighton after going 9-9 and 4-14 in the two preceding campaigns after a great year with his son a few seasons before. In 23 years as a HC at the time, McDermott had merely one S16 appearance (17 years earlier in 2000) and merely one conference title.
Those were Gene's top two candidates to replace the guy who had taken Ohio State to 2 Final Fours ('07 and '12), finished the regular season #1 in the nation two times ('07 and '11), had won 5 Big Ten titles, 4 BTT titles + 3x runner up, 6x NCAA 2-seed or better, 6 top 15 AP finishes. McDermott has certainly had some respectable success of late, making the S16 or better in 3 of the last 4 years, but in his 31 seasons as a HC, he has only 3 conference titles and only 4 S16s. In 14 years as a HC, Holtmann still has zero conference titles and just that one S16.
Make no mistake, the Thad Matta coaching OSU was not the Thad Matta who accomplished all of the accolades listed above in his first 9 seasons as his ability to recruit fell because of his unfortunate health. OSU went 10-8, 11-7, 11-7 and 7-11 in conference in his last 4 years at OSU and with no promise of recruiting improvement changes had to be made. But the June timing was disastrous and McDermott's and Holtmann's resume's didn't even hold a candle to what Matta had done in his 4 years prior to OSU when he won 3 conference titles and 3 conference tournament titles, including doing one or both each of those 4 years.
As Gene was in the air to Omaha to meet with McDermott, Chris Holtmann, who had turned down OSU's offer days before (despite OSU being on the short list of schools he had stated he would leave Butler for) had a change of heart and accepted the Ohio State offer. It was a mess ESPN even reported that Greg McDermott had been offered the job at Ohio State while Gene maintained that Holtmann was always his guy.
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/651585/2018/11/14/how-close-did-ohio-st...
https://www.espn.co.uk/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/19573898/creig...
Just after the Holtmann hire, Gene also outlined his expectations for the program:
"We should be in the hunt for the (Big Ten) championship, eventually, every single year," Smith told me. "We should be one of those teams, and Thad had it going for a window of time, where Ohio State has a chance to always be in the hunt for the Big Ten championship."
"We should be a top 15 program (in the country) all the time," Smith told me. "Periodically top five. That's my expectation."
https://www.cleveland.com/osu/2017/06/gene_smiths_expectations_for_o.html
I won't be biased - by late February of 2018, Holtmann did look like a surprise home run hire. OSU had defeated #1 MSU and won at #3 Purdue to sit atop the Big Ten at 12-1. But OSU would suffer a 2nd loss to the same PSU team that had beaten them and lost at a good Michigan team to fall into and finish 2nd. As the 2-seed, OSU drew PSU and the Lions beat us a third straight time. As a 5 seed in the dance, this would be as close as Holtmann would come to a S16 at OSU, beating SDSU in a battle and then losing a battle to 8th-ranked, 4-seed Gonzaga in Boise (admittedly a very tough draw for us as a 5-seed).
In 2018-19, OSU rose to 13th ranked before losing 5 straight in January. In the dance, OSU beat ISU before bowing out to 11th-ranked, 3-seed Houston.
In 2019-20, OSU rose to 2nd in the nation with great wins over 10) Villanova, at 7) UNC, and 6) UK, only to lose 5 of 7 cycling into January. The Bucks finished by beating 3 ranked teams in their last 5 games. The BTT and NCAA were cancelled.
In 2020-21, Holtmann finally avoided the January swoon, landing his Buckeyes ranked 4th as 3rd-ranked Michigan came to town. OSU lost that game to start a 1-3 skid, and though the losses each came to a top 10 team, the inability to close out games resounded. The BTT yielded a win over that now 4th-ranked Michigan team and an OT loss to 3rd ranked Illinois in the BTT championship game. Great BTT results, but OSU also blew monstrous leads to Minnesota and Purdue and was very fortunate to survive both. Then the game that in all honesty, probably marked Holtmann's time here - OSU as a 2-seed lost to 15-seed Oral Roberts in OT in the NCAA tournament.
In 2021-22, Holtmann added to his big wins by knocking off #1 Duke and a February win at 15th-ranked Illinois put OSU in the conference title race. But he responded by losing at Maryland and Nebraska (teams that won just 15 and 10 games each that season) and after beating MSU, lost the finale at home to Michigan. His 6-seed Bucks were promptly dismissed in the BTT by PSU and were ousted by Villanova.
A few turned on him after the Oral Roberts loss. For others it was the string of losses to end the 2022 season that turned us against him. A few die-hard optimists held on to hope, citing Jay Wright's slow rise.
At this point, Holtmann was 5 seasons in with some excellent wins (#1 MSU, #1 at #3 Purdue, #4 Michigan, Duke, #6 UK, at #7 UNC, #7 MD, at #8 Iowa, and #10 Villanova) but he had also racked up 11 losses in 5 years to Big Ten teams that failed to even win more than 16 total games. Once close to a conference title and once very close to a BTT title, but no cigar, and zero NCAA success. Recruiting was strong, but each season entailed a collapse and he had no S16s. It was at that point when Gene provided him a raise and extended his contract 3 additional years.
In 2022-23 the loss to UNC was one of the most frustrating late-game coaching situations I'd seen and the collapse after leading #1 Purdue in early January was the game where I felt the players realized Holtmann was a dud in late game coaching and the bottom fell out, at one point winning just 1 game in a 15-game stretch
Worse yet, Holtmann received a performance rating of "excellent".
Smith rated Holtmann as “excellent” in his 2022-23 performance review following the team’s subpar 16-19 season — which included a stretch of 14 losses in 15 games — and told Buckeye Sports Bulletin in June that he was pleased with the coach’s ability to navigate his young team through a difficult year.
“I feel great about Chris’ on-floor coaching,” Smith told BSB last summer. “He’s a very good teacher. But we needed to get to a point where our roster was being managed appropriately, and I feel that happened, so I’m really excited about the future, too.
“People aren’t giving him the respect he deserves,” he continued. “From a recruiting point of view, we’ve had two top-five classes back-to-back and two one-and-dones….We have a group of young men that really bought in and they’ll be our leadership for the future.”
https://www.buckeyesports.com/ohio-state-athletic-director-gene-smith-no...
Holtmann started last year's campaign 12-2, only to produce a similar 2-for-11 game brown streak in 2024 that ultimately forced the mid-season firing. While it seems at that point, even the most optimistic Holtmann fans knew the writing was on the wall, Holtmann claimed he was shocked, thinking he'd have time to reverse course.
When asked about the decision, Gene stated:
“It was hard,” Smith replied. He then paused for 13 seconds, emotionally attempting to hold back tears. “Shoot, it was really hard. When you have good people and you care about people, it was hard. If you don't have a good person and you really don't care about the person, it's easier. When you care about someone like I do, it makes it hard.”
Smith admitted that, due to the money Holtmann is now owed, he regrets that decision to extend his contract after the 2021-22 season.
Holtmann's contract buyout landed at $12.8M
Buoyed by the firing, inspired by Diebler's leadership, or both, OSU defeated 2nd-ranked Purdue and won 6 of the next 7, before losing a heart breaker to 13th-ranked Illinois in the BTT quarterfinal.
As OSU was beginning its coaching search in February, this time we were well ahead of the traditional timing and had a leg up on the other schools. The candidate class was excellent with up and coming coaches like Dusty May and Pat Kelsey and names like Sean Miller, Doug McDermott, Buzz Williams, and even John Calipari came into the mix. Dusty May emerged as a lead candidate and OSU were reported to be in contact just 6 days after Holtmann's firing.
As that was going on, Chris Holtmann made an interesting visit - to see leading candidate Dusty May.
"He did initially consider taking a year away from coaching, but then he took trips to see friends in the profession as they made their pushes toward March. He flew to FAU to see Dusty May -- the now-Michigan coach wanted to know the ins and outs of the then-vacant Ohio State job."
https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/biggest-coaching-gambl...
May would land at Michigan and currently has them ranked 20th and playing in the BTT quarterfinals, a year after they finished dead last in conference.
Pat Kelsey has taken a L'ville program that finishes dead last in the ACC the previous two years to a 16-2 conference campaign and has them ranked 13th and playing in the ACC quarter finals. Noteworthy is that L'ville is paying him less than OSU is paying Diebler!
Other candidates have had mixed (DeVries) or lesser success (Paris).
OSU finished just 9-11 in conference and has lost 5 of their last 7. Diebler continues to exhibit excellent character, professionalism, and passion, but unfortunately his program seems to embody many hallmarks of his predecessor - including long scoring droughts, lack of offensive sets, no post presence, and subpar defense. Unfortunately, two very poorly executed coaching searches flanking one ill-advised contract extension got us here.
Diebler will be here next year and the portal moves between now and then will likely determine whether his future at OSU is to be long or short-lived. His stay may also be determined based on whether or not he's willing to bring on an experienced assistant for support with the X's and O's.
Ohio State is and will continue to be a football school. I sincerely hope that in the not too distant future we can return to being a top 12 basketball school as well.
