Chris Holtmann isn’t keeping it a secret.
Many of the philosophies he’s employed in building his Ohio State program, whether on the practice court or the recruiting trail, have come straight from his old Big East rival at Villanova. An open admirer of Jay Wright as a coach and a person, Holtmann will go head-to-head with the Wildcat head coach for the eighth time Sunday as the seventh-seeded Buckeyes try to spoil the postseason plans of No. 2 seed Villanova and earn a berth in the Sweet 16 for the first time in nine years.
Holtmann has already won three matchups between his tenures at Butler and Ohio State, and to even his personal series against Wright, he’ll have to outdo a coach that has – intentionally or otherwise – provided him a blueprint for success over the years.
“We've been a little bit not as much in touch since I left the league, but just tremendous respect, and I've stolen so much from him and his program,” Holtmann said at a press conference Saturday. “He has no idea because I didn't tell him. I just didn't tell him. I just watched his practices, watched his teams, anything that he was doing in terms of teaching I would watch. I even to this day, I have stolen a lot from him. So thanks, Jay.”
Wright put Holtmann through the wringer during his first two seasons at Butler. Villanova won the Big East Tournament and regular season championship in 2014-15 and won the Big East regular season and NCAA championships the following year. In four matchups with Wright during that period, Holtmann’s Bulldogs went 0-4.
The next year, though, Holtmann exacted some revenge. With the reigning national champion Wildcats sitting undefeated at 14-0, Butler gave them their first loss of the season, knocking off the No. 1 team in the country on Jan. 4, 2017. Given a chance to get that game back in late February, Villanova fell to the Bulldogs again, losing by eight points and this time as the No. 2 team in the country.
“When we beat them when they were No. 1 in the country when I was at Butler, he took a moment, I think he just said, ‘Hey, I'm really happy for you,’” Holtmann said. “Then when we played in the NCAA Tournament, it might have been our game to go to the Sweet 16, he sent me a really long, nice text, just basically said, ‘Hey, be Chris.’ Those moments stick out. He didn't have to do that.”
But with just one career Sweet 16 berth in 11 years as a Division I college basketball head coach, Holtmann is still trying to catch up to Wright’s laundry list of accomplishments at Villanova. Wright has been to three Final Fours in the past 13 years and won a pair of national titles in the past six seasons.
“I just really, really, really like the guy and have tremendous respect for him, and I think I'm among so many people that have great respect for him and really like him."– Chris Holtmann
After one of those trips to the Final Four, Holtmann said Wright disseminated some philosophies that have stuck with him to this day. Among them were a modified recruiting strategy as well as a transition toward playing smaller at the college level.
“Jay talked openly several years ago, really after his Final Four run, about a little bit of a change in his recruiting approach,” Holtmann said. “And if you go back and if you look at it – and those that follow the program know what I'm talking about there – and certainly that informs some of our decisions and how we went about recruiting.
“I'm aware of how he builds his roster, and he plays a smaller rotation. I think there's some appeal to that. I haven't been able to kind of adopt that maybe as much as I thought I might initially. But yeah, there's certainly some things there that I've thought about and kind of studied with the way he builds his roster.”
Holtmann’s emphasis on veteran guard play has been clear to see during his Ohio State tenure, as he has brought in four grad transfer guards in Keyshawn Woods, CJ Walker, Jamari Wheeler and Cedric Russell over the past several seasons. Add in the additions of Justice Sueing, Seth Towns and Joey Brunk, which brought Ohio State to nine total seniors this season, and it’s clear that Holtmann has tried to build a veteran-laden roster like Wright has consistently had at Villanova.
Beyond the way he builds his roster, Holtmann has also borrowed plenty of practice fundamentals from Wright, soaking in as much as possible about the way he teaches and the manner in which his teams train behind closed doors.
“I've got an assistant who is all about two-foot plays and jump stop and 2-point percentage and really a lot of that is from Jay,” Holtmann said. “The fundamentals of footwork; the fundamentals of playing on balance on drives and on the interior; the idea of an offensive rebound being an immediate kick-out for a three is something that I think a lot of teams have stolen.
“We know this because I think they left it behind a time or two. Jay in every road – you guys know this that follow him – in any road locker room has ‘attitude’ written up at the top. We don't do that, but we've stolen some similar ideas. Those are a couple examples.”
When asked Saturday what stands out about Holtmann’s Ohio State program, Wright listed discipline, intelligence and physicality. Two of those words were the same as ones Holtmann used to describe what makes this year’s Villanova team so successful.
“It's very similar. They have tremendous buy-in to how they want to play. They've got a real toughness to them, always,” Holtmann said. “They just have a real tremendous toughness and approach that is just really tough-minded, as well. They're physically tough, and they're really, really tough-minded. Some of that is because they're older. They're typically older, but even some of his younger teams have been really tough and tough-minded. It requires a great discipline to play a team that is this talented, this good, this well-coached, and as tough as they are.”
The only time Ohio State has taken on Wright during the Holtmann era, the Buckeyes got the better of the matchup, beating then-No. 10 Villanova by 25 points in Columbus in a lopsided upset on Nov. 13, 2019. Several players from either side – not to mention both head coaches – remain from those teams heading into Sunday, but such a one-sided result in either direction would be highly unexpected.
No matter what the ultimate result, there will be no less respect between the leaders of the two programs, which share more than a few similarities.
“I just really, really, really like the guy and have tremendous respect for him, and I think I'm among so many people that have great respect for him and really like him,” Holtmann said. “He was really in our league – in the Big East right now, or when I was in the league, and I'm sure it's the same, he's kind of the statesman of the league. Everything kind of goes as he leads. But he's also got a great humility in how he is as a person and as a coach.”
