I think he was playing like a Top 5 B1G center this season prior to the injury and he still might be. Edey, TJD, Omoruyi, Dickinson, Key in that order.

LOL, Holtmann staying won't have anything to do with whether Sensabaugh goes or stays.

Lebron as coach would be interesting. We'd probably recruit stupid amounts of talent but put the hottest of messes on the court every season.

Zed was playing extremely well before the shoulder injury. He led the team in overall (offensive and defensive) efficiency and was rebounding the ball extremely well. It's not a debtate. He is a good player when healthy.

I don't think him being less than 100% is any sort of excuse for our current struggles, though.

You were clear, I guess I was just commenting in terms of time frame. How much longer will we keep Holtmann vs. how much more can May do to prove himself before we theoretically fire Holtmann?

Maybe May is the guy we hire after we fire the guy who replaces Holtmann and stinks it up for a couple years.

If this season keeps tanking, I'm not sure ND would pay for Holtmann's buyout + contract to get him.

But it's not a bad thought.

Or we could hire someone who would actually be a good fit and help this program take the next step.

I am sorry, I just have no tolerance for the "hire anyone" rhetoric. I would prefer this program not get caught in a cycle where we are all bitterly complaining about the state of things every season.

Fire the guy to get the right guy, not just so you can keep firing guys every few years.

Oh, no question. Matta was arguably the best OSU basketball coach ever and very likely will be the best one I see in my lifetime. What he did during his peak phase was really special.

Unfortunately, once things went South (Thad's health limitations + questionable assistant hires really impacted the product towards the end) it bled over into the recruiting with people questioning how much longer he would be here. Then it was over.

It might be a little soon to say but it's very possible we are headed towards a similar downward spiral right now.

When hiring a mid-major guy all the way up to the level of a program like OSU, I don't know, I think you need to see a little more proof of concept than, oh, hey, his team has beat a bunch of bad teams this season (and barely squeaked by several of those bad teams).

Not trying to look down on your idea, just expressing my own personal feelings of caution about making a hire like that. The list is endless of similar hires that power conference programs have tried to make that didn't work out at all. Heck, guys like John Groce and Archie Miller had pretty significant success to their names at Ohio U. and Dayton (much moreso than Dusty May has so far) and look how well those two worked out in the B1G at programs with huge AD and fanbase support.

So far it seems that Alabama struck gold with Nate Oats, but he had showed that he could lead Buffalo to some big wins (like @WVU and @Cuse) in the regular season as well as dominate the MAC and then notched a couple wins in the Big Dance two seasons in a row. And at Bama he's turned out to be a fantastic recruiter, something that is really difficult to project until you see the guy recruiting with those power conference school resources and name behind him.

With guys like Dusty May and Pat Kelsey, yeah, they have done some good things at the level that they are at (particularly Kelsey between what he did at Winthrop and now his current season at CoC), but it is a gamble. You don't know how well they will recruit, you don't know if their coaching and systems and roster management will cut it in a conference like the B1G, you haven't seen anything about how they could do in the Dance -- it's just a very big risk. That said, if things keep going the way they are with Holtmann right now, then we're getting closer to closer to the point of having not much to lose in trying something different.

I don't think Holtmann was considered a "bigtime reach." In fact, I would say him and Archie Miller were the two hottest rising HC prospects that off-season. Holtmann had taken over an impromptu mess of a situation at Butler and made the Dance 3 times in a row when Butler was not expected to do anything in a pretty good Big East (Bulldogs had a lot of good wins during his time there), and he was coming of a really good S16 season when OSU hired him. To compare, there was far more of positive worth on Holtmann's resume at that point than some of the hot names right now (Tang, Gates, Kelsey) have at this point.

I don't think Holtmann forgot how to coach, per se, but he is looking really lost with this team. And the mental toughness and close game decisions, both from the coaching staff and the players, simply aren't where they need to be. I am more than fine with OSU moving on this season or next from Holt if we can line up a good candidate. If we lose players and our 2023 recruits, so be it, though I would think promoting Diebler could potentially avoid that. Don't promote Diebler and try to make a bargain hire on a new HC and you're probably looking at losing all your best players and recruits and then having a pretty substantial rebuild ahead (and a rebuild that might lead nowhere). Hire a proven winner/recruiter and you're probably fine and possibly better than fine, but OSU better be ready to pay the price tag for that.

I wouldn't go to the extreme of "flat-out awful most of the season" as he has had some solid stretches of play here and there and was great in the Texas Tech game, but I can't completely disagree with your basic point. He is one of three semi-consistent scorers on the team (him, Brice, and Zed) and he does a decent variety of things for the team but he is anti-clutch and has been having WAY too many lapses (defensive, offensive, you name it) this season. He is constantly hurting this team despite the things he does bring to the table. In close games he has been straight up poison on the court.

The reality is I just don't think the current team-make up is good for his role. He is trying to be the guy or co-guy with Brice and the team leader and I don't think that role suits him. And Holtmann isn't doing him or the team any favors by trying to push this "Sueing as playmaker" agenda.

Sueing would have worked great as a supplemental dude last season with Liddell and Branham and Key, I still believe that. He could have just provided solid two-way play and rebounding and been opportunistic about scoring and so on. But him and Sensabaugh don't really jive together well on the court and no one else has stepped up yet to be that better guard/wing counterpart to Brice. So we get Sueing and Sensabaugh trying to make iso plays without much connection to each other or the rest of the team, and when the ball does move around no one else has been able to do much of anything with it other than sometimes Zed, who clearly isn't 100%. It's ugly season.

I'm usually the last fan to say stuff like this because I don't like giving up on a season... but it honestly might be time to play for next season. Bench everyone who won't have eligiblity next season and give more minutes to the frosh (though Thornton is already playing more than he can handle). Holden and Key can play, too, since they should be back next season. I guess maybe Brown, too, though I don't know if we are ever going to get much out of him no matter how we use him.

Yeah, it's not the most analytical podcast out there but it's very enjoyable and entertaining. Absolutely my favorite college basketball podcast.

You can tell that Titus hates absolutely everything that is going on with Ohio State basketball right now but he manages to keep it light and funny despite the obvious pain. He is coming to the Iowa game and he said he has packed up the W and bringing it with him, don't worry, everyone, he's gonna fix this.  LOL

Jake Diebler, however, is a very good recruiter. He bears a lot of the credit for bringing in the 2022 and 2023 classes, which are T10 classes and the best classes that OSU has landed since the Tate/Russell/KBD class (sorry, no, I am not going to count the Lyle/Harris/Mitchell/Grandstaff/Giddens class).

Half the problem with this team right now is confidence and not executing on offense with the same energy and purpose like they were earlier in the season. They've lost the buy-in because the losing has got to their heads. And Holtmann doesn't seem to know what to do or what buttons to push or what rotations to play to get them out of that funk.

I would not be opposed to a situation either this season or next season where Gene asks Holtmann to step down and then gives Diebler the interim coach role to see if he can muster up better energy and execution from the players that he convinced to come to Ohio State.

I listened to one of their podcasts and it was fine but ultimately I would rather listen to music while I work. Or Titus & Tate.

This team exposes the lie in every fan talking about a new roster who says things like "I know we gonna take some lumps" or "I don't care about wins and losses" but "I just want to see a team who competes." Well, this team competes. It has either blown out every cupcake or been right in it against every power conference team it has played. And it has lost almost every single close game. Pretty frustrating and miserable. Holtmann's resume and track record up to this point is a lot more solid than some of our fanbase cares to recognize, but he seems lost with this team at this point. And unfortunately losing too much in basketball affects the mentality of your players and eventually even can infect your culture. Once guys stop believing a coach can help them win, they stop executing. Bad situation for the program and its future right now.

I mean, the close game losses are frustrating, to be sure, but they do blow teams out. They've blown plenty of teams out just this season. They blew out Northwestern at Northwestern just a couple weeks ago.

But yeah this year they seem borderline incapable of winning the tight ones, aside from a fake Tanner Holden buzzer beater.

Yeah, Likekele was doing a lot of positive things for the team before his hiatus. Second best rebounder, second best ballhandler and passer, most versatile defender. And was occasionally scoring around the basket. Has not been the same since his hiatus.

I don't want to defend Holtmann. I am tired of this program coming up short, too.

If the accomplishments aren't good enough for you, that's fine, they're not good enough for me, either... but try to have enough perspective to realize that there still have been positive things during his tenure. He has one of 3 power conference programs to have at least 20 wins every season he has been here. If that's not an accomplishment, then why don't more schools do it? He has made the Dance every season since he was a HC at Butler, which is now 9 years. If that's not an accomplishment, then why are there over 280 schools every season who aren't making it? There are a lot of power conference schools included that, many of which where basketball is the top priority (unlike OSU).

Everyone defines mediocrity differently. For me it's on the negative side of average. That's not where OSU has been under Holtmann. We've pretty consistently had a Top 35ish team under him out of 350+ D1 teams and we have typically finished about in the top third of the B1G (finishing 5th out of 14 teams on average). How far we have gone in the Dance on average (R32) lines right up with that overall performance level.

Do I think that's good enough? No. Am I happy with that? No. But if we truly want this program to be better, we need to have a realistic perspective of where we are at so that we can understand what it will take for this program to move upwards. What's markedly better than being a T35-T25 type program? T15-T10ish. If OSU wants to get and/or keep a T10 basketball coach, at some point OSU will have to pay T10 money (either to acquire the coach or to keep a coach here that is performing at that level). Right now OSU isn't paying anywhere close to that and I'm not sure if OSU ever will, given that basketball is such a distant second to football in the eyes of the athletic department, the alumni, the fanbase, and so on.

Again, not me advocating for keeping Holtmann and acting like we should be content with this. I am just acknowledging the reality that if OSU does eventually get a coach that achieves at the level that a lot of people on here are asking for, OSU better be prepared to pay a heftier price than it has been paying. And hopefully fans would actually show up for most of the games and not just for the odd big game here and there after football is over. Otherwise, it would be difficult for OSU to justify the expenditure.

And as for the other guys, I am not necessarily gung-ho about any of them, they are just names that people are throwing out there that I agree at least have potential to do well here if we hired them. I appreciate you bringing up their contract details because I don't know if people realize, yes, that is the kind of money that OSU would need to match and exceed just to get a HC who has done anything at this level so far, not to mention buy outs (and Gates and Tang are just in their first year head coaching at power conference schools). Kelsey hasn't done much of anything yet in terms of impressive wins or recruiting so while he has won a lot of games with CoC this season and would be a bargain deal, it'd be a total gamble. I don't know enough about him to comment on possible personality issues. With Diebler I think my thing is locking in his recruiting ability could be important. OSU is not going to be able to reload on one and dones constantly so T75-T40 recruits is the sweet spot for this program and Diebler was able to get 7 guys like that in 2 classes, all but one of them from out of state. That's not nothing. And I don't know if scheme has been as big an issue with this team as motivation and execution. If the HC has a good relationship with his guys and they follow him, it can pay dividends. So that's my thought process there. Again, Diebler would be somewhat of a gamble, too, since he has no HC experience other than when Holtmann was out. And if I had my druthers we would hire someone like Billy Donovan or Nate Oats, but then we're talking pretty unrealistically.

Yeah, listen, I didn't mean to get so involved in debating this. You think Collins would be a good hire, I don't. It is what it is. Agree to disagree!

That's your prerogative. For me, I hate not making the Dance. Absolutely hate it. That to me is the one concrete goal that a Buckeye coach should meet more often than not. That's why I have given Holtmann more leeway than some because he makes the Dance every season, something a lot of coaches fail to do. That said, we might miss the Dance this season and the pattern of coming up short of achieving anything noteworthy and losing close games has become too frustrating. But I'd rather have a coach that gets us to the Dance and keeps the program competitive than someone who totally sinks the program. I'd much rather be where OSU has been with Holtmann than where Indiana was with Archie Miller or Louisville was with Chris Mack and now Kenny Payne, or where Georgetown is with Patrick Ewing, or where Minnesota was with Lil Pitino, and so on and so forth. So while I don't necessarily think that we should give Holtmann a long leash here and do think we should expect better, it absolutely matters to me that if we're replacing him we're trying to do so with a guy who can help this program make progress. It matters. Treating this like "anyone would be better" is asinine and ignorant. Some coaches would be better, and OSU needs to hire one of them or be very smart about who COULD be better if given the chance.

I'm trying to figure out why you want to hire a coach who is worse than the one we have and who has already shown he can't do anything in the B1G. At any rate, you can't seem to explain why, so I'm gonna stop trying to figure it out. Diebler is not the ideal hire in my mind, but at least he has shown he can recruit T50 talent, which is more than Collins has done. Guys like Pat Kelsey, Dennis Gates, and Jerome Tang are intriguing to me because at least there is potential there. With Collins we have already seen what he can do in the B1G and it's not much. In fact, it's considerably worse than Holtmann. And there is no debating that. You want to bring talent pool into the equation, what about all the injury issues Holtmann has had to deal with? If we're gonna let the results do the talking, that needs to apply to any potential candidates, too. And Collins' results are bad. Period.

Collins hasn't achieved much of anything in 9 years at a power conference program, that's the main gist. He only once has had his team in the top half of the B1G, he has only made the Dance once, etc.

My question about talent is me trying to understand why you would want to hire Collins, that's it. Because there is virtually nothing on his current resume that should encourage OSU to hire him. You're right that the academics situation at Northwestern is a bit more limiting. That said, the school is in a good basketball state, is Chicago-adjacent, and it is a power conference program. Collins has had numerous T150 guys and a decent number of 4-star guys and only 1 year out of 9 did he do anything half-decent with them. 

So I'm assuming you think Collins would get exceptional talent at OSU and that he would coach them well enough to far exceed anything he has done to date. For me, personally, I'd rather promote Diebler than hire Collins because Diebler has shown at what level he can recruit to OSU and I think it is the optimal level that OSU needs.

They'd be excited until he lost his first game.