I agree that recruiting NEEDS to improve, but the question is, does Diebler understand exactly where he & Holtmann went wrong? I'm not sure he does, but with more NIL resources in the future we'll at least be able to see if it's more of a lack of funding or lack of understanding issue.
Right now KenPom has OSU as the 26th-best offense in the country, which is good enough to be a tournament team. The problem is the defense is 76th-best, which is borderline NIT-level. Last year, offense #30, defense #50 - same problems. '24 offense was #39, defense #63. Now, you can still make the tournament with a bad defense and elite offense - between 2021 & 2022, OSU had two offenses in the top-13 of the country, and two defenses #82 or below & made it both years, and even though they did have EJ Liddell at least providing some backbone to the defense they didn't make the Sweet 16 in either season.
Obviously the recruiting philosophy has to change somewhat, we can't just keep doing the same things and falling into the same mistakes every year. My hope as I've said before is that more NIL resources will be available in the future to enable more higher level athletes to come into the program, but they will need to recognize that where they have gone wrong is defense, defense, defense and tweak their recruiting philosophy a bit to bring in the right guys. Maybe even having a couple starters who are plus defenders would do the trick - in 2020, they had Kaleb Wesson anchor the post and
