Sweet 16 is too lofty but making the tourney and looking competitive should be the floor of expectations shouldn't it? I just want to see them busting ass the entire time Win or Loss be damned. Just the way I was raised and played every sport I played. I don't understand another way. Maybe thats a lot of other people too.
OK, so if they make the tournament this season, you're not going to advocate for firing Diebler? I would say that is a reasonable goal, but I think the hair-trigger desire to fire the coach every year after the team struggles is toxic, unreasonable and short-sighted. If you were hired to do a job, wouldn't you like a fair chance to be able to do it? I don't think if you were in Diebler's shoes you would feel that 2 years is sufficient to build your program, especially with NIL hampering recruiting efforts & some other unfortunate developments like Meechie quitting the team after 10 games last season.
That's reasonable. I will say, you've sometimes got to change the culture in the program as the coach. It's pretty obvious Diebler has not had practically unlimited funds like Dusty May to add whomever he wants in the portal. But yes, you want to see the team playing all-out for 40 minutes. The fact that OSU has trailed by 10+ like every single one of their games against power conference teams this season, that's got to change. You can start by hustling for loose balls and aggressively pursuing defensive rebounds from the very beginning of the game. The fact that the team has been able to ramp up the effort and take a lead (or in the case of Illinois, tie) in the second half has been a good sign, but certainly it would be better if these guys weren't letting themselves get into a hole earlier in the game.
