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Court Report: Chris Holtmann on Ohio State's 10-1 start and why Duke-Texas Tech could be December's best game
Matt Norlander's weekly look inside college hoops also examines the Irish's bad luck, St. John's and much more
Ohio State won on Tuesday night, beating Youngstown State and improving its record to 10-1. Buckeyes coach Chris Holtmann is doing it again. He's collectively got his players overachieving and is in the coach-of-the-year conversation.
Last season, his first at Ohio State, just getting to the NIT would have been a triumph. Instead Ohio State tied for second in the Big Ten, earned a No. 5 seed in the NCAA Tournament and even won its first-round game to finish with 25 wins. After the losses of Big Ten Player of the Year Keita Bates-Diop, seniors Jae'Sean Tate, Andrew Dakichand Kam Williams, and the departure of transfer Micah Potter, expectation levels were again reduced.
Who would reasonably expect this team to be a top-25 outfit this season? And yet it's showing out as just that. The Buckeyes are ranked No. 15 in the AP Top 25, have road wins over Cincinnati and Creighton and have an average margin of victory of 19.6 points.
The nonconference schedule hasn't been terrific but it also hasn't been as easy as plenty of other major-conference teams'. Holtmann is well on his way to a sixth straight season of 21 wins or more, something he's done across three schools: Gardner-Webb, Butler and OSU.
The Buckeyes have dangled off the radar through the first seven weeks of the season, but they have a good opportunity on a national stage this weekend: UCLAawaits on Saturday afternoon in Chicago at the CBS Sports Classic. If the No. 15 Buckeyes beat the Bruins, the 11-1 record would match Holtmann's personal best for most wins to start a season.
But, in typical Holtmann fashion, he's swatting away as much praise and flattery as possible at this point on the calendar.
"The ranking is the ranking and I don't know what to make of that and don't really care," Holtmann told CBS Sports on Tuesday night. "I think the sample size is really too small right now."
But beating UCLA would mean three quad-one victories for Ohio State, which is a solid pre-Christmas showing. Question is, can OSU handle UCLA's talent? Though Ohio State was primarily prepping in recent days for Youngstown State, Holtmann's seen a bit of Bruins tape, too.
"They're good and long and present real matchup issues," Holtmann said. "They've got some youth as well, but Kris Wilkes is fantastic -- they're good."
Last season, one of the worst losses Ohio State took was in the CBS Sports Classic: UNC dismantled the Buckeyes, 86-72. This was right after Carolina took one of its most surprising losses of the Roy Williams era.
"It was nice of Wofford to win at UNC right before we played them," Holtmann joked. "We appreciated that."
And now UCLA, which faces a tough game at Cincinnati on Wednesday night, is tottering after losing 74-72 at home to a good Belmont team on Saturday. Holtmann praised Alford in wake of the defeat.
"I give Steve a ton of credit for scheduling that game after finals," Holtmann said. "Any chance I get, I'm picking (Belmont coach) Rick Byrd's brain on coaching stuff."
But if there's one true concern for Holtmann and his team at the moment, it's their inability to play with consistency at the start of games.
"We have not played well in our last couple of games," Holtmann said. "As a coach, you're only as good as you're playing. I still think we're, in all honestly, we're not sure how the teams that we've beaten, we're not sure [yet] how good those teams are. All I can go off of right now is the fact that we're not playing well. We were down 14-2 to Youngstown State (on Tuesday). We're down at half against Bucknell. Some of that is we don't necessarily have the ability right now to just overwhelm teams."
Part of this is Ohio State's youth. Holtmann has played seven freshmen and sophomores including Kyle Young, who had nine DNPs last season, but is now in the starting lineup. Sophomore Kaleb Wesson (16.5 ppg, 6.5 rpg) has been the team's only reliable game-over-game player. The Buckeyes haven't looked like the best team in the Big Ten, but the league is looking upgraded from a season ago and OSU still shapes as one of the five best in the conference.
So the Buckeyes are a win against UCLA and a home victory over High Point from becoming 12-1. That's not unordinary for the school; it's something that happened four times in 13 seasons under Thad Matta -- a reminder of how good/great the program was during his tenure.
And quite possibly a glimpse into how relevant and consistent it will be going forward under Holtmann.
https://www.cbssports.com/college-b...duke-texas-tech-could-be-decembers-best-game/
Matt Norlander's weekly look inside college hoops also examines the Irish's bad luck, St. John's and much more
- by Matt Norlander
- @MattNorlander
- 21h ago • 13 min read
Ohio State won on Tuesday night, beating Youngstown State and improving its record to 10-1. Buckeyes coach Chris Holtmann is doing it again. He's collectively got his players overachieving and is in the coach-of-the-year conversation.
Last season, his first at Ohio State, just getting to the NIT would have been a triumph. Instead Ohio State tied for second in the Big Ten, earned a No. 5 seed in the NCAA Tournament and even won its first-round game to finish with 25 wins. After the losses of Big Ten Player of the Year Keita Bates-Diop, seniors Jae'Sean Tate, Andrew Dakichand Kam Williams, and the departure of transfer Micah Potter, expectation levels were again reduced.
Who would reasonably expect this team to be a top-25 outfit this season? And yet it's showing out as just that. The Buckeyes are ranked No. 15 in the AP Top 25, have road wins over Cincinnati and Creighton and have an average margin of victory of 19.6 points.
The nonconference schedule hasn't been terrific but it also hasn't been as easy as plenty of other major-conference teams'. Holtmann is well on his way to a sixth straight season of 21 wins or more, something he's done across three schools: Gardner-Webb, Butler and OSU.
The Buckeyes have dangled off the radar through the first seven weeks of the season, but they have a good opportunity on a national stage this weekend: UCLAawaits on Saturday afternoon in Chicago at the CBS Sports Classic. If the No. 15 Buckeyes beat the Bruins, the 11-1 record would match Holtmann's personal best for most wins to start a season.
But, in typical Holtmann fashion, he's swatting away as much praise and flattery as possible at this point on the calendar.
"The ranking is the ranking and I don't know what to make of that and don't really care," Holtmann told CBS Sports on Tuesday night. "I think the sample size is really too small right now."
But beating UCLA would mean three quad-one victories for Ohio State, which is a solid pre-Christmas showing. Question is, can OSU handle UCLA's talent? Though Ohio State was primarily prepping in recent days for Youngstown State, Holtmann's seen a bit of Bruins tape, too.
"They're good and long and present real matchup issues," Holtmann said. "They've got some youth as well, but Kris Wilkes is fantastic -- they're good."
Last season, one of the worst losses Ohio State took was in the CBS Sports Classic: UNC dismantled the Buckeyes, 86-72. This was right after Carolina took one of its most surprising losses of the Roy Williams era.
"It was nice of Wofford to win at UNC right before we played them," Holtmann joked. "We appreciated that."
And now UCLA, which faces a tough game at Cincinnati on Wednesday night, is tottering after losing 74-72 at home to a good Belmont team on Saturday. Holtmann praised Alford in wake of the defeat.
"I give Steve a ton of credit for scheduling that game after finals," Holtmann said. "Any chance I get, I'm picking (Belmont coach) Rick Byrd's brain on coaching stuff."
But if there's one true concern for Holtmann and his team at the moment, it's their inability to play with consistency at the start of games.
"We have not played well in our last couple of games," Holtmann said. "As a coach, you're only as good as you're playing. I still think we're, in all honestly, we're not sure how the teams that we've beaten, we're not sure [yet] how good those teams are. All I can go off of right now is the fact that we're not playing well. We were down 14-2 to Youngstown State (on Tuesday). We're down at half against Bucknell. Some of that is we don't necessarily have the ability right now to just overwhelm teams."
Part of this is Ohio State's youth. Holtmann has played seven freshmen and sophomores including Kyle Young, who had nine DNPs last season, but is now in the starting lineup. Sophomore Kaleb Wesson (16.5 ppg, 6.5 rpg) has been the team's only reliable game-over-game player. The Buckeyes haven't looked like the best team in the Big Ten, but the league is looking upgraded from a season ago and OSU still shapes as one of the five best in the conference.
So the Buckeyes are a win against UCLA and a home victory over High Point from becoming 12-1. That's not unordinary for the school; it's something that happened four times in 13 seasons under Thad Matta -- a reminder of how good/great the program was during his tenure.
And quite possibly a glimpse into how relevant and consistent it will be going forward under Holtmann.
https://www.cbssports.com/college-b...duke-texas-tech-could-be-decembers-best-game/
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nomatta
Hall of Fame
Holtmann's comments are right on the money. I don't really care if UCLA lost to Belmont and just got smacked around by UC, they have talent and length in their starting line-up and they will probably be extra motivated to try to beat a ranked team on a neutral court to try to stop their losing skid.
I STILL don't know what to think about this Buckeye team. We usually play good D but sometimes not good enough. Sometimes our offense looks almost miraculously competent and other times it looks like I thought it might look before the season started--that is, bad. We don't have much size or length for a high-major and our athleticism is pretty average overall. We have a few skilled guys but mostly we are a team of role players, we don't really have that dynamic player that can do a variety of things well. We've often looked like more than the sum of our parts but in the times where we've looked just like the sum of our parts, it seems like literally anyone could beat us. We haven't played a solid 40 minutes since the Minny game.
We absolutely have to come out strong and focused against UCLA and we have to maintain for the majority of the game. We play a first half nearly as bad as the first half against YSU and the game will be over before the second half.
I STILL don't know what to think about this Buckeye team. We usually play good D but sometimes not good enough. Sometimes our offense looks almost miraculously competent and other times it looks like I thought it might look before the season started--that is, bad. We don't have much size or length for a high-major and our athleticism is pretty average overall. We have a few skilled guys but mostly we are a team of role players, we don't really have that dynamic player that can do a variety of things well. We've often looked like more than the sum of our parts but in the times where we've looked just like the sum of our parts, it seems like literally anyone could beat us. We haven't played a solid 40 minutes since the Minny game.
We absolutely have to come out strong and focused against UCLA and we have to maintain for the majority of the game. We play a first half nearly as bad as the first half against YSU and the game will be over before the second half.
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We're still struggling breaking the press and the half court traps. Other than that, we're looking pretty OK.
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Regardless of the struggles, I don't think anyone really thought we would be 10-1 (2-0) at this point. This year was considered a building year heading into next year with some major talent coming in. Even 9-9 the rest of the way in B1G play likely gets them into the tourney with how strong the B1G is this year. Hopefully they can pull off better than that but things are definitely looking more up than they were preseason.
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OhioState001
Tressel Loyalist
This team is not as talentless as people make it out to be.We have a bunch of good players but no real star. Jackson, Washington, Muhammad, and Woods are all guys who can stroke it from 3, handle the ball well and play good defense. Sure none of those guys are going to score 18 points but these are really well rounded good players. Kaleb is just a load to handle and is the best player on the team. Then Andre and Young (who is much improved) are our grinder guys who can play D, and still score when the ball comes their way.
This group of players is a huge improvement over the last real batch of Matta players: Scott, Thompson, Smith and Williams. Sure we lost Tate and Bates-Diop but the combination of Muhammed, Washington, Woods with a much improved Young doesn't really leave much drop off.
This group of players is a huge improvement over the last real batch of Matta players: Scott, Thompson, Smith and Williams. Sure we lost Tate and Bates-Diop but the combination of Muhammed, Washington, Woods with a much improved Young doesn't really leave much drop off.
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Jagdaddy
Head Coach
And Luther Muhammad may well develop into a real star. Jackson doing a better, and much more frequent, job of turning the corner and finishing at the rim or making the right pass, which I think he's capable of but isn't really doing this year, would go a long way in smoothing out some of the offensive issues IMO.
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LitlBuck
Kevin Warren is an ass
I am pretty sure that is what @nomatta was addressing in his post above. I did not expect this team to be 10-1 at this point in the season and if they play like they did in the first half against YSU against any team remaining on our schedule, exclude High Point, we will have lost the game by halftime. We play some pretty good perimeter defense but we are severely lacking someone who can consistently make shots, game after game, from the outside. So far this season we have been fortunate in that one of the perimeter guys has stepped up and made some shots but we are really been pretty dependent upon Wesson for our offense to go through and come January that it is going to become more difficult to do.
Holtmann has done an extraordinary job with this team because we do lack offensive talent. He has been a master at getting the right players on the floor at the right time. If we go 10-10 including the two that we already have in the Big Ten I will be satisfied at season's end.
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12-1, should be, going into conference. Pretty damn sure we'd have all taken that at the outset.
I'm pretty confident right now that barring catastrophe, this team doesn't lose more than 6 games this season before the tourney.
I'm pretty confident right now that barring catastrophe, this team doesn't lose more than 6 games this season before the tourney.
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DZ83CK
Not Banned
Well I dont agree with the 6-game part, but otherwise you are on the mark.
I feel like it will be very difficult for OSU to lose less than 9 prior to the NCAA tournament. You figure 1 in the BTT, they have 1 at this point ... if they pull off a 13-7 mark in conference games, that is an optimistic yet realistic goal. It would take a 14-6 mark in league play to be better than a 9-loss team, and while that is possible in theory, it is going to be really hard to get there this season. I am hoping for a 14-6 league mark, but not really setting that as my expectation. I feel 13-7 is more likely, maybe even 12-8.
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