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2018-2019 Ohio State Men's Basketball (Official Thread)

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OhioState001 said:
If we lost without Kaleb that's one thing. It's another to getting completely destroyed by Northwestern. The concerning thing to me is that every single player was notably better on the first game of the season against Cincinnati then they are now. Would anyone contest that?
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I would not contest that. Luther in particular is a mystery.

But in the last two games everyone on this team is trying to do more than they can and do it in a way they have not been asked to do it all season. Holtman has failed to make this team work without Kaleb. No coach would find it easy.

MSU lost two key players and kept on rolling. Our football team can lose half a dozen DL and keep on rolling. That is what depth does for you.

We have zero depth. If Ahrens was as good a player as he looked against Iowa he would have been playing all year. Don't blame Holtman because he had a great game that Iowa wasn't prepared for and now can't repeat it. Our first 12 games IMO were the result of a coach who figured out how to put the few pieces he had together well. It was a fragile structure without spare parts. It is not as simple as taking away Kaleb. You lose him and what he does for everyone else on the team.

Again - no kudos for Holtman. But this team is what it is.
 
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Jake said:
We were 7th and coming off our best conference win of the season two games ago. The arrow was pointing upward.

I'm not sure why you're acting like Kaleb's suspension didn't happen or is somehow irrelevant. He's only the leading scorer and rebounder on a team that was good (not great) at best. Suddenly that makes Coach H a bad coach?
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Exactly. There's being critical of a team and then there's just having delusions of grandeur as some of our fans have. There's not one coach in America that could do more with this roster and the current situation. Not a single one.
 
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Systems_id said:
Exactly. There's being critical of a team and then there's just having delusions of grandeur as some of our fans have. There's not one coach in America that could do more with this roster and the current situation. Not a single one.
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I don't think that's true but I do think it would be difficult for most coaches to do much better.

I think this team was just maybe turning a sort of corner and finding an offensive identity in the Iowa game and then the suspension happened. You can't just look at Kaleb's individual stats, you have to realize how so many of the offensive opportunities for our other players were there directly or indirectly because of Kaleb either drawing defensive attention or facilitating out of the post. Without him and without any other consistent scorers or playmakers, this team has zero offensive structure or identity, and that's a hard thing to find all of the sudden when you're at the end of the season and don't have other options to turn to.

Not only was Kaleb the biggest contributor to the plus in the +/- in our offense, he also--believe it or not--grades out as one of the few consistent pluses for our defense, too. It's difficult to overstate how debilitating his suspension is for a team who has no clear offensive options outside of him and no real length in the paint without him. We don't even have a consistent rebounder besides him.

All of which is to say that this has got to be one of the most damaging short-term (I'm assuming) suspensions in Buckeye history.
 
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As to the point about players not improving, most individual player improvement happens during the off-season and the most improvement is usually during the frosh to sophomore seasons. Kyle and Kaleb definitely improved from last season. Andre definitely improved from last season. Our frosh are frosh and are going to be erratic; only one of these guys was a T100 talent: Luther--and after starting and playing 30 mpg all season, he's hit an epic wall. But I think you've seen some progress from Ahrens (a guy outside the T200, it bears mentioning), and I think Duane seems to be coming out of his mid-season slump. Ledee had a decent game against Purdue, he's just kind of your typical lost frosh big. CJ was always going to be WYSIWYG and it's just unfortunate that he is dealing with injuries and isn't the real PG that this team needs to run the offense. Woods has finally started playing better after getting thrown for a major loop by B1G play, and like CJ the developmental thing was already kind of done for him--both guys were low-ceiling to begin with, that's why they were committed to mid-majors out of HS. Jallow is the one guy I think you can truly say has stagnated/regressed under this staff (and who has some potential to be more) but every program is gonna have a guy or two like that where you think they should be further along or better than they are.

In the preseason some people had delusions about the talent level--even with Kaleb, this is the least talented OSU team in YEARS. And then there were those that thought they could be greater than the sum of their parts. Unfortunately, they don't have enough complementary cogs, and without Kaleb they don't even have a motor. Losing by 35 is never okay and neither is losing by 18 to the last-place conference team, so I'm not hear to praise the coaches. But I am going to recognize the situation they are in with this roster at the moment, and that situation really sucks.
 
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Systems_id said:
Who would do better? Off the top of my head I can't think of a single current coach.
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Someone who really knows how to implement a system to minimize disadvantages, perhaps slow the game down and put the onus on the defense. Like Tony Bennett, for instance. Now, don't get me wrong, without Kaleb the team would still be mediocre, but I don't think they would have lost by 35 to Purdue and might have even beat NW.

That said, I'm not saying I want Holtmann to be Bennett. I just think that Holtmann, like a lot of coaches, needs some talented offensive players in order to be effective, particularly on offense. He and Pedon aren't some offensive system wunderkinds. They need some guys that can take advantage of iso situations or penetrate a D, they're not gonna whip up some sophisticated motion offense or swing offense because that's not what they know and it's not their style and it's not what they recruit for.

They don't have the players they need right now, and without Kaleb they don't really have a starting point, to be honest, for any sort of effective offensive scheme that they could implement at this point in the season. I think next class helps but I think it's something that they are going to continue to have to build towards with the subsequent classes and as our 2019 class gets some experience and makes the adjustment to playing at this level and in this strong a conference (as we can see how B1G play has sort of steamrolled Luther at this point).
 
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nomatta said:
Someone who really knows how to implement a system to minimize disadvantages, perhaps slow the game down and put the onus on the defense. Like Tony Bennett, for instance. Now, don't get me wrong, without Kaleb the team would still be mediocre, but I don't think they would have lost by 35 to Purdue and might have even beat NW.

That said, I'm not saying I want Holtmann to be Bennett. I just think that Holtmann, like a lot of coaches, needs some talented offensive players in order to be effective, particularly on offense. He and Pedon aren't some offensive system wunderkinds. They need some guys that can take advantage of iso situations or penetrate a D, they're not gonna whip up some sophisticated motion offense or swing offense because that's not what they know and it's not their style and it's not what they recruit for.

They don't have the players they need right now, and without Kaleb they don't really have a starting point, to be honest, for any sort of effective offensive scheme that they could implement at this point in the season. I think next class helps but I think it's something that they are going to continue to have to build towards with the subsequent classes and as our 2019 class gets some experience and makes the adjustment to playing at this level and in this strong a conference (as we can see how B1G play has sort of steamrolled Luther at this point).
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Considering Bennett went 15-16 and 16-15 his first two years at Virginia with comparable, and arguably better rosters than OSU currently has, I'm gonna have to heavily disagree with you there. I'm also gonna have to disagree with you that wouldn't lose by 35 to Purdue, considering Virginia got beat by 40 against Washington on a neutral court during the 2010-2011 Maui Invitational.

Ironically, Thad is the only coach in recent memory that I can think of who's instantly turned around a floundering program. Most other coaches like Izzo, Belein, Bennett, Bo Ryan, Jay Wright, etc. took multiple years to get their programs competing at an elite level.
 
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Bennett is not the same coach he was those first two years at Virginia. He's gotten considerably better.

FWIW, I think Holtmann is going to become a better coach, too. We should remember that this is only his 5th year coaching at the power conference level.
 
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Systems_id said:
Ironically, Thad is the only coach in recent memory that I can think of who's instantly turned around a floundering program. Most other coaches like Izzo, Belein, Bennett, Bo Ryan, Jay Wright, etc. took multiple years to get their programs competing at an elite level.
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And did it in such spectacular fashion that it cost him in seasons 4 & 5.
 
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nomatta said:
Bennett is not the same coach he was those first two years at Virginia. He's gotten considerably better.
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You sure his record improving had nothing to do with the fact that maybe it took a little while longer to get the program going than what people wanted?

Did Belein grow as a coach? Or did it simply take awhile to get the roster back to where it needed to be in order to compete?
 
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Both things are true.

If you don't think these coaches had to grow in their positions at different programs playing in different conferences, I can only ask, "Why?"

Yeah, the rosters needed help, but the coaches had to grow to get to where they are now.
 
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