When Ohio State decided to part ways with Thad Matta this past June, many Buckeyes fans believed Gene Smith waited too long to pull the trigger, for one reason more than any other: Archie Miller had already taken another job.
Miller, an Ohio State assistant under Matta from 2007-09, had been earmarked as Matta’s potential successor after proving he could run a successful program of his own at Dayton, where he led the Flyers to five NCAA Tournament appearances in six years.
That all changed in March, however, when Indiana hired Miller to be the new coach of the Hoosiers. Ohio State was perceived to be settling for its second choice, at best, when it hired Chris Holtmann to coach the Buckeyes three months later.
Going into their first head-to-head matchup on Tuesday night, however, it is Holtmann who has had the decisively more successful first season between the two new Big Ten coaches.
Neither the Buckeyes nor Hoosiers were expected to be Big Ten contenders in their first seasons with their new coaches; in a preseason poll of Big Ten basketball writers compiled by the Columbus Dispatch and The Athletic, Indiana was projected to finish ninth in the conference, while Ohio State was chosen to finish 11th.
Miller’s Hoosiers have been about what they were expected to be, currently holding a 12-10 overall record and tied for sixth in the conference standings with a 5-5 record in Big Ten play. Holtmann’s squad, though, has outperformed all expectations, currently sitting second in the Big Ten standings and ranking 17th in the AP Top 25 with an 18-5 overall record and 9-1 in conference play.
While the Hoosiers would need to have a tremendous surge – starting with an upset win over the Buckeyes on Tuesday night – to have a shot at making the NCAA Tournament, Ohio State has a real shot at being a top-four seed, projected as a No. 3 seed by ESPN’s Joe Lunardi as of Monday.
| Category | Ohio State | Indiana |
|---|---|---|
| overall record | 18-5 | 12-10 |
| Big Ten record | 9-1 | 5-5 |
| AP ranking | 17 | NR |
| KenPom ranking | 14 | 88 |
| RPI | 22 | 116 |
There’s a case to be made that Holtmann ended up in a better position to succeed going into year one. While Indiana lost three of its top four scorers from last season, Ohio State returned its top scorer from last season – Jae’Sean Tate – while Keita Bates-Diop returned from injury to emerge, as of now, as the Big Ten Player of the Year favorite.
At the same time, it must be remembered that Ohio State had only seven scholarship players on its roster when Holtmann arrived. The Buckeyes’ success this season likely would not have been possible if not for Holtmann’s quick work on the recruiting trail, as he was able to land three players in less than two months – Musa Jallow on a reclassification into the class of 2017, Andrew Dakich on a graduate transfer from Michigan and Kyle Young on a flip from Holtmann’s former school, Butler – who have all been a part of the Buckeyes’ 10-man rotation this season.
Every player who has seen regular playing time for Indiana this season was either already on the roster or already committed to be a Hoosier when Miller arrived.
Miller and the Hoosiers (19th) have a slight edge over Holtmann and the Buckeyes (22nd) in 247Sports’ composite rankings for the recruiting class of 2018, with Miller scoring one big win over Holtmann by signing Pickerington four-star forward Jerome Hunter, the class’ No. 2 recruit from the state of Ohio. Miller and his staff, though, also had three additional months to build relationships with recruits; Holtmann, despite being well into the 2018 recruiting cycle when he took the Ohio State job, still managed to land four commitments by the end of September to put together a top-25 class.
Ultimately, the long-term success of both Holtmann and Miller will be determined largely by how well they are able to recruit for the class of 2019 and beyond – for which neither Ohio State nor Indiana has landed a commitment yet – and there’s no question that the two coaches will be compared against one another as long as Holtmann is in Columbus and Miller is in Bloomington.
In time, Miller could certainly end up building Indiana back into a powerhouse. On the other hand, it’s also possible that Holtmann’s hot start at Ohio State could end up being a flash in the pan.
Holtmann himself isn’t worried about trying to prove a point against Miller when the two coaches meet Tuesday night (7 p.m., ESPN2), as he is trying to keep his focus solely upon coaching his team.
"I’ll really kind of leave that up to fans of both programs," Holtmann said Monday on the comparisons between himself and Miller. "I try not to worry about any other program, or even compare myself to what anybody else is doing."
On first impression, though, it appears as though Miller’s decision to take the Indiana job might have been a blessing in disguise for Ohio State, as Holtmann has performed as well as anyone could have reasonably expected so far.
