For whatever reason, Chris Holtmann has gained a reputation as a defense-first coach. Maybe it’s due to the toughness he preaches, or possibly it has happened because his teams have always played with a slow tempo. Even Holtmann himself has indulged the thought at times, saying a month ago that defense “has maybe been what a lot of our teams have been built on.”
The reality, however, shows something different.
All three Gardner-Webb teams he coached had more efficient offenses than defenses. The last two of his three Butler teams were more efficient offensively than defensively. At Ohio State, his first two teams had higher-rated defenses, but last season and this season the Buckeyes have been more efficient offensively than defensively. Put it all together and it paints a picture of a head coach who has made the most of the talent on each of his teams, whether that meant trending toward one end of the court or the other.
The 2020-21 Buckeyes are, without a doubt, an offense-first team.
Of course, they want to get better on defense considering nobody in the past two decades ranked as low as them in adjusted defensive efficiency has made the Final Four outside of a Dwyane Wade-led Marquette team in 2003. Winning shootouts consecutively to advance in the postseason is always a challenge no matter how many points you can put up, so improving defensively is Holtmann’s chief focus at the moment.
“It's consuming me,” Holtmann said on Wednesday. “It's everything I think about because that's our biggest area of growth and improvement that we need to have.”
But the roster Holtmann has constructed this season has turned into an absolute juggernaut offensively.
Ohio State is scoring 78.5 points per game, the most by a Buckeyes team since the 1991-92 season when Jim Jackson helped a 26-6 team featuring Chris Jent, Lawrence Funderburke, Mark Baker and Jamaal Brown put up 80.6 points per game. This season's team ranks 12th in college basketball and second in the Big Ten behind Iowa with 1.015 points per possession. KenPom’s data goes back two decades, and during that time which includes several elite teams in the peaks of the Thad Matta era, the Buckeyes have never recorded an adjusted offensive efficiency quite as high as the one they have currently (125.1).
Single-game performances back up the fact that these aren’t empty numbers.
The Buckeyes, who have scored 85 or more points in seven of 23 games, outscored both No. 5 Illinois (87-81) and No. 9 Iowa (89-85) in shootout, cracked 90 points in games against Notre Dame and Penn State and put up 74 points against Wisconsin, the top-rated defense they've faced all season that has allowed that many points only four times. Most recently, Ohio State lost to Michigan, but it put up 87 points on one of the country’s better defenses. In doing so, it recorded its program-best adjusted offensive efficiency in a loss in two decades, which nobody will write home about yet underscores the firepower this group possesses.
“I thought we'd be good offensively. I didn't anticipate this kind of offensive ability,” Holtmann said. “I didn't think we'd have trouble scoring. I know coming into the season, we as coaches some of us talked about, well, we might have trouble. I did not think we'd have trouble scoring.”
And they haven’t. Not through almost the entire regular season.
Holtmann points to a couple reasons in particular to explain why his team exceeded even his own expectations.
“Talented offensive players, No. 1. Tremendous buy-in to playing together. Tremendous buy-in. I would say those two factors,” Holtmann said. “I also think (assistant coach) Ryan Pedon's done a great job. He's done a great job. It's not like football where we necessarily have an offensive coordinator, but it's probably as close to any program in college basketball toward that model, and I think he deserves a lot of credit.”
Of late, the Buckeyes have gotten even better, scoring a combined 179 points in the past two games while recording two of this team's four best single-game adjusted offensive efficiency ratings of the season.
The emergence of Duane Washington Jr. and E.J. Liddell as two of the best scorers in the Big Ten has taken an already-dangerous offense up a notch recently. The duo has combined to score 128 points on 74 shot attempts in the past three games.
Washington has improved his finishing at the rim, making 7-of-8 2s in Sunday’s loss to Michigan. He’s shooting 70 percent at the rim in the month of February. At the same time, the junior guard has hit 11 of his last 19 3-pointers.
“Duane's been really, really locked in,” Holtmann said on Sunday. “He's been really committed to growing as a player. He's been really committed to playing the right way.”
Liddell has been just about as locked in as his counterpart in the backcourt.
The 6-foot-7 forward has scored 20 or more points in six of his last 10 games, recording his second double-double of the season with 23 points and 10 boards in the loss to Michigan. Already an adept finisher at the rim with an efficient mid-range game, he has added a 3-point shot to his repertoire in the middle of his sophomore season. Liddell started the year 3-of-18 from 3 to begin the year and has gone 15-for-31 from beyond the arc since Jan. 16.
“He's playing with such great confidence right now, and he's such a difficult matchup offensively,” Holtmann said last week. “The challenge for E.J. is his ball-screen has to improve, he's got to help us more in some of those areas, but he is in such a tremendous confidence and rhythm right now offensively. And he's such a difficult matchup. When we recruited him, we always envisioned that he was going to be your prototypical matchup nightmare. That's what we did. We envisioned that. We just didn't know when it was going to be realized. It's been realized here really quickly in Columbus.”
Surrounding Liddell and Washington, the Buckeyes have gotten quality offensive performances from a number of others.
Justice Sueing, despite a six-points performance versus the Wolverines that included a back-breaking late turnover, has put up 10.3 points per game while getting to the line 3.6 times a game. CJ Walker has come on strong this month, scoring in double figures four times in a row while shooting at least 50 percent in each game and recording 17 assists compared to seven turnovers. Kyle Young and Zed Key are weapons around the rim, and Justin Ahrens has hit 45.8 percent of his 3s. Seth Towns offers a pretty shooting stroke in his limited minutes.
This Ohio State offense lacks many collective weaknesses. It doesn't turn the ball over much, shoots efficiently both inside and beyond the arc, knocks down free throws and generally takes smart shots.
Because of the high-powered attack, the fourth-ranked Buckeyes with an 18-5 record can sit in Columbus this week knowing that despite an uncharacteristically shaky defense, they’re capable of scoring with just about anybody in the country.
