Mixed Results of Internally Hired Head Coaches Suggests Any Number of Paths Possible for Jake Diebler at Ohio State

Midseason firings aren’t generally common across high-major programs, and far less common are interim head coaches who earn full-time roles from their results after taking over for an outbound head coach.

That’s the situation Ohio State finds itself in now, however, after dropping the interim tag from Jake Diebler’s title on Sunday after he won six of eight games to close the 2023-24 season following the firing of Chris Holtmann. There’s a longer list of assistants that have been promoted internally by programs, but in those instances the head coaches being replaced were often revered by fans of those teams, not disdained in the way Holtmann was at the end of his tenure.

Clearly, Diebler won over the powers that be and much of the Buckeye fanbase with his late-season run. But now that he’s the man in the chair permanently, it’s worth looking at how similar moves have gone both at Ohio State and for other programs.

Randy Ayers (Ohio State)

The place to start is in the history books of Ohio State’s program.

There’s an eerie similarity between the circumstances of Randy Ayers’ hiring and that of Diebler’s. Ayers didn’t serve as interim head coach before landing the gig, with the job opening up in 1989 following the departure of three-year program leader Gary Williams to become the head coach at Maryland. But he was the last internally promoted assistant to become the Buckeyes head coach.

Also like Diebler, Ayers’ promotion came at the behest of team stability, namely the retention of incoming star freshman guard Jim Jackson and a talented class of rising sophomores. Both Diebler and Ayers had no previous head coaching experience at the time of their promotions.

It started all well and good for Ayers. With Williams’ crop of talent and Jackson in tow, he went 17-13 with an NCAA Tournament appearance and victory in his first campaign before going a combined 53-10 the next two years with Sweet 16 and Elite Eight appearances. Those were the final two years of Jackson, however, and with his departure came the decline of Ayers’ program.

A 15-13 season in 1992-93 proved the final winning campaign for Ayers. Following that year, Ohio State admitted to a series of 17 violations in the recruitment of Damon Flint. Flint was ruled ineligible to attend OSU and the program was placed on a one-year probation, losing one scholarship for the following year.

Ayers’ squad went 13-16 the next season before posting the worst record in school history in a dismal 6-22 1994-95 campaign. Ayers got a shot to turn things around and went 10-17 the following year, then got his walking papers after a second straight 10-17 season in 1996-97. 

Greg Gard (Wisconsin)

Of the limited number of interim head coaches who earned a full-time job since the year 2000, Gard might be the most successful.

His midseason promotion with the Badgers didn’t come as the result of a firing but rather a retirement. The legendary Bo Ryan hung it up on Dec. 15, 2015, after leading Wisconsin on back-to-back Final Four runs to cap a 14-year career in Madison.

Ryan said before the 2015-16 season that it would be his last and his preferred successor was Gard, one of Ryan’s assistants during his entire tenure with the Badgers. Gard immediately led Wisconsin to the Sweet 16 as interim head coach, earning the full-time job despite no previous head coaching experience, then another Sweet 16 the following year.

Gard’s yet to reach the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament since, but has won at least 20 games in six of his eight full seasons at the helm. He has two shared Big Ten regular season crowns from 2020 and 2022, and has Wisconsin back in the Big Dance this year as a five-seed.

Chris Holtmann (Butler)

When talking about internally promoted assistants, one has to bring up the most recent Ohio State headman.

Holtmann himself, now being replaced by an interim-turned-full-time head coach, became a full-time head coach in a major conference for the first time after winning over an administration in his own interim capacity.

In the wake of Brad Stevens’ departure for the NBA’s Boston Celtics in 2013, Butler’s basketball program had fallen from the sustained heights Stevens found. The Bulldogs won at least 26 games in five of their six seasons under Stevens, but went just 14-17 in their only campaign under Brandon Miller, the coach who hired Holtmann from Gardner-Webb.

Miller took a medical leave of absence on Oct. 2, 2014 and Holtmann was named interim head coach. Butler roared off to an 8-1 start with an upset win over No. 5 North Carolina, and Butler’s administration dropped the interim tag from Holtmann’s title on Jan. 2, 2015, as the team boasted a 10-4 record.

Holtmann finished that season 23-11, went 22-11 the following year and made his lone career Sweet 16 appearance to date with the Bulldogs after a 25-9 2016-17 campaign that proved enough to land him the Ohio State job.

Those reading this story know how that turned out; Holtmann never reached a Sweet 16 at Ohio State, posted the school’s first losing record in 19 years in 2022-23 and earned his walking papers following another in a line of January/February slumps this campaign. But seeing as how Butler has matched 22 wins, his lowest total there, just once in the seven seasons since his departure and has yet to surpass it, the Bulldogs’ promotion of him was an undeniable success for their program. *ducks*

Pat Knight (Texas Tech)

Ron Chenoy – USA TODAY Sports

Of the examples listed here, this interim head coach did the least in producing on-court results during his stint to be named full-time head coach.

With hindsight, it’s easy to call this a nepotism hire. Pat Knight is the son of legendary head coach Bob Knight, who, after being unceremoniously fired to end his 29-year career at Indiana, wound up on Texas Tech’s sidelines for seven seasons.

That came with the hiring of Pat to be his assistant, who was promoted to associate head coach in 2004. When Bob abruptly retired on Feb. 4, 2008, Pat took over and finished the season 4-7. A late-season upset of No. 5 Texas proved enough to land him the full-time gig, however.

A losing 14-19 record accompanied by a 3-13 mark in conference play marred Pat’s first full year. He turned things around a bit to the tune of a 19-16 second campaign, though the Red Raiders were still just 4-12 in the Big 12.

Going 13-19 in 2010-11 sealed the fate of the younger Knight, however, and he was fired following the season. For his career, he went 16-42 in Big 12 play.

Knight landed at Lamar for the following season and went 23-12 with a Southland Conference Tournament title. The Cardinals went 3-28 and 3-22 in the next two seasons under his leadership. He was fired with five games remaining in the latter campaign and hasn’t coached since. Knight is now a scout for the Indiana Pacers.

Rodney Terry (Texas)

Gard, Holtmann and Pat Knight were all interim head coaches not because of mid-season firings but due to unexpected departures from the standing head coaches at their respective programs. What Terry shares in common with Diebler is that he landed the full-time job at Texas after proving his mettle when the leader of the Longhorns’ program was fired.

On the court, things were going well under Chris Beard, his predecessor. Texas won 22 games in a season in 2021-22 for the first time in eight years, making the NCAA Tournament as a No. 6 seed and advancing to the second round. Beard got the Longhorns off to a 7-1 start in 2022-23.

Then, on Dec. 12, 2022, Beard was arrested and charged with a third-degree felony count of strangulation against a family member, his fiancée Randi Trew. He was suspended without pay that day before his firing less than a month later.

Trew later stated that Beard was acting in self-defense, that he did not strangle her, and that she did not believe he was “trying to intentionally harm me in any way.” The charge was dismissed in February 2023 and Beard is now the head coach at Ole Miss, but Beard was fired by Texas that January.

Terry – who had 10 total years of head coaching experience at Fresno State and UTEP – won eight of his first nine games as interim head coach before leading the Longhorns all the way to a Big 12 tournament championship and an Elite Eight appearance in the NCAA Tournament. His overall record was 22-8, earning him the job full-time.

His success has been sustained so far, going 20-12 with Texas in 2023-24 and earning a No. 7 seed in this year’s NCAA Tournament. At least for now, an internal promotion worked out for the Longhorns in this instance.

Mike Boynton (Oklahoma State)

Scott Wachter – USA TODAY Sports

Boynton is a product of the coaching tree of Brad Underwood, the man whose Illinois team just defeated Ohio State in the Big Ten quarterfinals en route to a Big Ten Tournament title. He first linked with Underwood when both were assistants at South Carolina.

When Underwood landed the head coaching job at Stephen F. Austin, Boynton followed him there to be his assistant, then did the same after the duo saw enough success with the Lumberjacks to get Underwood the top position at Oklahoma State.

Underwood went 20-13 in his lone season with the Cowboys in 2016-17 before Illinois tabbed him as its next head coach the following year. Boynton stayed behind to be his successor, and like Diebler, was hired with no prior head coaching experience.

Hired the same year Chris Holtmann arrived in Columbus, Boynton’s career also lasted seven seasons before he too was fired this year, though Oklahoma State waited until after the season to give him the boot for a 12-20 campaign. The Cowboys tied for last in the Big 12 with a 4-14 conference record. It was the second losing season of Boynton’s career in Stillwater, though he also went an even 15-15 in 2021-22.

Boynton finished with a career mark of 119-109 that came with just one NCAA Tournament appearance, which simply doesn’t cut the mustard at a power conference school. The Cowboys went dancing four out of five years prior to Boynton’s promotion.

Tom Izzo (Michigan State)

Two examples of success round out this story. Izzo needs little introduction. Michigan State’s 29th-year head coach has taken the Spartans to eight Final Fours and won the 2000 National Championship.

Before all of that, however, Izzo spent a dozen years as a Michigan State assistant under Jud Heathcote. In 1995 he was named Heathcote’s successor despite his only previous head coaching experience being at the prep level for Ishpeming High School.

Now Izzo has compiled a career record of 706-294. It’s safe to say this internal promotion worked out.

Hubert Davis (North Carolina)

When legendary three-time national champion Roy Williams decided to hang it up for the Tar Heels in 2021, his nine-year assistant wasn’t a no-brainer successor. Much like Diebler, Izzo, Boynton, Ayers and Gard, he had no head coaching experience to speak of.

He hit the ground running.

Davis went 24-9 through his first regular season and ACC Tournament, landing in the NCAA Tournament as a No. 8 seed not expected to make many waves. The Tar Heels instead rocked the entire boat of college basketball, getting all the way to the 2022 national championship game before falling to Kansas in a 72-69 battle.

Davis and North Carolina missed the tourney the following year after a 20-13 season but bounced back in a big way in 2023-24, going 27-7 to grab one of four No. 1 seeds in this year’s NCAA Tournament.

In the end, promoting an assistant internally with no prior head coaching experience has worked out very well for some schools, fine for some and very poorly for others. A lack of background won’t stop Diebler from obtaining the results he and fans expect of him at Ohio State.

Ultimately, it’s up to him to write his own history.