Gene Smith stood silent before the media contingent gathered in Ohio State basketball’s postgame interview room, clenching and unclenching his jaw as he tried to find the words he’d lost.
The decision he made to fire Chris Holtmann on Wednesday wasn’t an easy one for him. Firing someone is rarely easy, but it’s made harder when you’ve developed an admiration for that person’s character.
“It’s really hard,” Smith said sullenly. “When you have good people and you care about people, then it’s hard. When you don’t have a good person, you really don’t care about the person, it’s easier. But when you care about someone like I do, it makes it hard.”
Another element not alleviating any of the weight on Smith’s shoulders is that it will be one of his last acts as athletic director to fire the head coach he hired and built a relationship with over the past seven years.
But Smith had to set his emotions aside. His duty, professionally, is to place Ohio State’s athletes in the best position possible to succeed. On the court, it’s become clear to Smith that Holtmann isn’t doing that.
So on Wednesday, Smith gave the man he seemingly considers a friend his walking papers.
“My responsibility is to the program,” Smith said. “It’s to these young men that compete every single day. I don’t care what sport it is, whatever it is, my responsibility is to those young people and to the program. And so I just felt, at this particular time, with six regular season games left and a Big Ten Tournament and whatever the postseason brings, a spark of energy was needed.”
The results of the last 14 months have been untenable for Ohio State’s program.
A streak during January and February that saw the Buckeyes lose 14 of 15 games led to a 16-19 record to close last season. Another January and February slog has seen Ohio State drop nine of 11 this year, most recently with a 62-54 loss at Wisconsin on Tuesday. Holtmann was fired hours later.
“When you don’t have a good person, you really don’t care about the person, it’s easier. But when you care about someone like I do, it makes it hard.”– Gene Smith on the emotional difficulty of firing Chris Holtmann
It wasn’t that game in and of itself that was likely the final straw. But paired with two separate 18-point second-half comeback losses this season as well as an utterly abysmal 83-58 implosion at Northwestern on Jan. 27 and a loss to Michigan, the Big Ten’s last-place team, it was too much for Smith to keep Holtmann on the job.
The Buckeyes have now tied a school record for longest road losing streak, dropping 16 straight in hostile environments. They are all but a lock to miss the NCAA Tournament for the second year in a row. They are next-to-last in the Big Ten.
“The young men have played hard, they’ve given a lot,” Smith said. “But the reality is, the body of work over this last year, I felt that they needed something different from a leadership point of view to give them that chance.”
Smith notoriously gave Holtmann a rating of “excellent” on his performance review of the coach last offseason, and one of the reasons he had confidence in the coach’s future at that time was the youth on Ohio State’s team and what it could develop into.
Given the experience now under the belts of players like Bruce Thornton, Roddy Gayle Jr. and Felix Okpara, Smith doesn’t feel that youth provides an excuse for the losses any longer.
“While they’re young, there’s a lot of minutes on that floor,” Smith said. “A lot. They still have six more games and the tournament. So I wanted to give them a shot and that’s what they have.”
Asked a follow-up on whether he believed in the talent on Ohio State’s team but simply felt it wasn’t being maximized properly, Smith replied bluntly, “That’s right.”
Smith was also blunt in saying that the decision to move on from Holtmann was his, not that of incoming athletic director Ross Bjork.
“I talked to him a lot, but it was my decision,” Smith said. “I told him what I was going to do. It wasn’t like (I asked him), ‘What do you think?’”
So now Jake Diebler will guide the Buckeyes forward the rest of this year as interim head coach before Ohio State’s search to replace Holtmann officially begins after the season. Bjork will lead that effort when he starts his Ohio State employment in March as a senior advisor.
In the present moment, on Wednesday, Smith had to put Ohio State basketball first. And that forced him to make the emotionally difficult decision to fire Holtmann.
“It’s about the program in the end, and I have to set aside my personal feelings and just go with what’s best for the program,” Smith said.
