This reminds me of a story.
Many years ago I attended a wedding in rural Ohio, and to impress a girl I attempted to guide her back home afterwards by having her car follow mine. This was stupid for a number of reasons.
First, I have a terrible sense of direction. I got us lost immediately. Second, I kept making left turns in some vain attempt at brute forcing a solution. Third, once it became apparent that I was leading us in circles, I kept doing that until a local cop pulled us over and told us where to go.
Eventually it did work out (in that we didn't die in a ravine somewhere, not that she was impressed because she absolutely was not) but the moral is that just because you have good intentions doesn't mean things are going to work out.
As of today, Ohio State men's basketball is 16-8 overall and 6-7 in the Big Ten. That's the exact record they had a year ago.
I should point out that that's a coincidence of time and space and the particulars themselves don't really mean much beyond "oh, that's weird." The 2018-2019 Ohio State men's basketball team is different in some significant ways from the 2019-2020 Ohio State men's basketball team, and it's reductive to claim otherwise.
Still, what matters for Chris Holtmann and company is that this is the exact scenario they had been trying to avoid (and in fact has used as motivation coming into this season):
What Holtmann made sound like a closely guarded secret, though, isn't really anything private at all. Rather, they're four numbers – 8, 12, 15, 193 – that are both publicly available and based on the results from last year’s Ohio State team. Each of the four has a specific meaning, and together they’ve been plastered all over the facility throughout the offseason.
Eight signifies Ohio State’s finish in the Big Ten last year. Twelve represents the amount of losses to conference opponents last season. Fifteen indicates the number of total losses last year. One-hundred ninety-three references the team’s ranking in turnover percentage last season.
Avoiding a repeat of that history would certainly be in Ohio State's best interest, but at this point it might be difficult. The Buckeyes are entering an increasingly challenging stretch of their schedule, and while they hopefully won't go 2-5 in their last seven games (as they did in 2019), it isn't out of the realm of possibility.
This reminds me of a story.
Many years ago I attended a wedding in rural Ohio, and to impress a girl I attempted to guide her back home afterwards by having her car follow mine.
It didn't work out and I got us lost, but the moral is that overconfident people without a plan often fall into predictable and destructive patterns.
In 2019, Ohio State's 16-8 record was buoyed by the team winning four of their previous six; granted, none of those victories had come against stiff competition (and one of the losses was a 65-49 barnburner against 5th-ranked Michigan), but the 2018-2019 team had beaten a decent Cincinnati squad 64-56 to open the season and handled one of college basketball's blue bloods several weeks later.
This season, Ohio State's 16-8 record has been buoyed by the team winning four of their previous six; granted, none of those victories had come against stiff competition (and one of the losses was a 70-57 barnburner against Wisconsin), but this year Holtmann's team has beaten a decent Cincinnati squad 64-56 to open the season and handled two of college basketball's blue bloods several weeks later.
The narrative arc of the 2018-2019 season peaked in late December 2018 and never quite recovered its trajectory. There is still time for this incarnation of the Buckeyes to rediscover the plot, but that'll mean avoiding the same fate as last year by fixing some problems that have become endemic to the team.
This reminds me of a story.
Many years ago I attended a wedding in rural Ohio, and to impress a girl I attempted to guide her back home afterwards by having her car follow mine.
I'm an idiot and got us lost, but the moral is that weird shit happens in Ohio and you just kind of have to roll with the punches.
I don't know what the rest of the season is going to look like for Chris Holtmann and the Buckeyes. They could find the magic spark they've been missing since December and roll on into March Madness with a vengeance, or they could make like Sam and Frodo and wander around Mordor until April.
At this point one definitely seems more likely than the other, but that's the magic of college sports: pretty much anything can happen on any given night. While the men's basketball team still has to play a gauntlet of teams looking to knock their block off, one final coincidence should give us some optimism, which is that despite all the noise and despair, Holtmann has taken his teams to the second round in each of his first two seasons in Columbus.
And actually, this reminds me of a story...
