Connor Lemons
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Head coach or otherwise, Jake Diebler must be on the Ohio State men’s basketball staff next season
Connor Lemons via our friends at Land-Grant Holy Land
Visit their fantastic blog and read the full article (and so much more) here
Adam Cairns/Columbus Dispatch / USA TODAY NETWORK
If he doesn’t get the job himself, Diebler would be a huge asset to the next head coach at Ohio State.
After a season like last year, it’s easy to understand why Ohio State fans were on edge at the onset of the 2023-24 season. The Ohio State men’s basketball program is a top-20, maybe even top-15 program in the country. Another year of missing the NCAA Tournament wasn’t going to be accepted, or someone’s head was going to be put on a stick.
Well, following a 14-11 start to the season and a 4-10 start in Big Ten play, it was head coach Chris Holtmann’s head that got put on a spike — to the applause of a good portion of the Ohio State fanbase, it seems. Athletic director Gene Smith opted to fire Holtmann with six regular season games to give interim head coach Jake Diebler a “runway for success.” The move came as a suprise, not because Holtmann was fired, but that it was done with one month left in the season.
Ohio State currently sits in 13th-place in the Big Ten, even after Diebler led the Buckeyes to an improbable upset of the second-ranked Purdue Boilermakers on Sunday afternoon. Even if the Buckeyes were to win out with Diebler and finish 10-10 in conference play, they would probably need to sweeten that with one or two wins in the Big Ten Tournament to get into the NCAA Tournament. Other than that, the only way into the big dance is to win the Big Ten Tournament as one of the four lowest seeds — something that has never been done before.
That’s a roundabout way of saying that Gene Smith dealt Diebler an impossible hand of cards. Smith knew it was unlikely that Diebler was going to rally this team, finish the season 6-0 and then win two more games in the Big Ten Tournament (AKA an eight-game winning streak). The most likely outcome was Diebler wins a few games down the stretch, Ohio State misses the NCAA Tournament once again, and then Diebler and the entire men’s basketball staff were laid off as the search for a new coach commenced.
But then the Purdue game happened, and every person who follows Ohio State basketball suddenly had a strong opinion on Jake Diebler’s future. People’s opinions on the 37-year old Gibsonburg native more or less fell in these three categories after the Buckeyes knocked off No. 2 Purdue on Sunday:
But after watching Diebler out-coach Matt Painter, the owner of four Big Ten titles and two Big Ten Tournament titles at Purdue, it made me think that Diebler does need to be on this staff next season. And after watching his interview with CBS’s Jim Spanarkel and sitting in Diebler’s post-game press conference, I walked out of the arena with a very strong conviction that the next coach — whoever it is — would be wise to make sure Diebler is on his staff.
Here’s why:
Even if the team has been bad, there are good players on this roster that an incoming coach would love to have at his disposal in year one. Bruce Thornton is obviously the big one — if he opts to transfer, he will be able to pick which program he wants to play for next year and go there. But Roddy Gayle, Evan Mahaffey, Devin Royal, and Scotty Middleton could also be foundational pieces that the next coach would like to keep around.
All of the freshmen and sophomores on this team speak highly of Diebler. “Coach Diebler” or “Coach Diebs” was the main recruiter for most of them, and they respect him just as much as they do Holtmann. After the Purdue game, the “CBB on Fox” social media accounts posted a video of Diebler falling to his knees as the final buzzer sounded and the Buckeyes had secured a win over Purdue. Several players on the team, including Thornton, Gayle, Middleton, Jamison Battle, and Zed Key, shared it on their own Instagram accounts and added hearts or messages like “Coach Diebs!”
If you’ve spent any time at all following this team, you know how much he means to the players as a coach, mentor, and friend. Keeping him on staff would increase the odds of keeping the core of this team intact.
At his first press conference as interim head coach, Diebler said that, for the moment, his energy has to be spent on the current team and the guys who are already committed to playing for Ohio State (Juni Mobley and Colin White). He said that any time spent recruiting beyond that would be doing a disservice to the guys already in the locker room.
Translation: We’re not going to spend time recruiting over these final four weeks when this staff is not going to be here in four weeks anyway.
It’s important to note that Ohio State has been pursuing three top-50 guards in the class of 2025, and the odds of one or more of them becoming Buckeyes seemed pretty high before Holtmann was fired. Of course, Diebler is knows all three guys very well at this point — Dorian Jones (No. 50, Richmond Heights), Jerry Easter Jr. (No. 26, La Lumiere), and Darryn Peterson (No. 3, Huntington Prep).
Not only is Diebler a recruiting asset in general as shown by the guys Ohio State has brought in over the last few years (No. 8 class in 2022, No. 12 class in 2023), but the Buckeyes will have no chance to pick up any of those elite prospects if Diebler goes elsewhere.
When Ryan Pedon left and took the Illinois State job, Diebler was promoted to Pedon’s old position — associate head coach and offensive coordinator. There have been individual games where Ohio State’s offense has gone stagnant, and the Buckeyes are prone to the occasional four or five-minute scoreless spell.
But in general, Ohio State’s offense has been average to above average under Diebler these last two years. The Buckeyes were bad last year, but the blame is mostly placed on defensive woes. Last year when they finished 16-19, Ohio State was still No. 19 nationally in offensive efficiency — better than teams such as Alabama, Creighton, and Kansas. Ohio State was No. 106 nationally in adjusted defensive effiency.
This season, Ohio State is No. 39 in offensive efficiency — its lowest rating since the 2018-2019 season. Still, top-40 is nothing to sneeze at. It’s not elite, but there are plenty of NCAA Tournament-caliber teams with OER’s in the 30’s and 40’s this year — Michigan State, Northwestern, and Kansas, to name a few.
In two years, Diebler’s helped coach one above average offense and another that’s been much closer to “average” or “fine” than “bad”.
The son of a longtime high school basketball coach in northwest Ohio and the brother of the best three-point shooter in Ohio State men’s basketball history, Diebler’s family has a long history with basketball in the state of Ohio. Diebler worked as a video coordinator for Thad Matta at Ohio State from 2013-2016, and then worked at Vanderbilt as an assistant for three seasons before Holtmann hired him in 2019. He now has eight years under his belt working for this program, and he’s said multiple times that it’s an “honor” to come to work every day.
Everything else aside, wouldn’t a new coach want at least one person on staff with a deep connection to the program and the Ohio basketball scene at large? Wouldn’t it be important to keep someone around who has a deep understanding of the rich history and expectations of one of the storied programs in college basketball?
Even without reasons 1-3, this feels like a big incentive to try and retain him all on its own.
Continue reading...
Connor Lemons via our friends at Land-Grant Holy Land
Visit their fantastic blog and read the full article (and so much more) here
Adam Cairns/Columbus Dispatch / USA TODAY NETWORK
If he doesn’t get the job himself, Diebler would be a huge asset to the next head coach at Ohio State.
After a season like last year, it’s easy to understand why Ohio State fans were on edge at the onset of the 2023-24 season. The Ohio State men’s basketball program is a top-20, maybe even top-15 program in the country. Another year of missing the NCAA Tournament wasn’t going to be accepted, or someone’s head was going to be put on a stick.
Well, following a 14-11 start to the season and a 4-10 start in Big Ten play, it was head coach Chris Holtmann’s head that got put on a spike — to the applause of a good portion of the Ohio State fanbase, it seems. Athletic director Gene Smith opted to fire Holtmann with six regular season games to give interim head coach Jake Diebler a “runway for success.” The move came as a suprise, not because Holtmann was fired, but that it was done with one month left in the season.
Ohio State currently sits in 13th-place in the Big Ten, even after Diebler led the Buckeyes to an improbable upset of the second-ranked Purdue Boilermakers on Sunday afternoon. Even if the Buckeyes were to win out with Diebler and finish 10-10 in conference play, they would probably need to sweeten that with one or two wins in the Big Ten Tournament to get into the NCAA Tournament. Other than that, the only way into the big dance is to win the Big Ten Tournament as one of the four lowest seeds — something that has never been done before.
That’s a roundabout way of saying that Gene Smith dealt Diebler an impossible hand of cards. Smith knew it was unlikely that Diebler was going to rally this team, finish the season 6-0 and then win two more games in the Big Ten Tournament (AKA an eight-game winning streak). The most likely outcome was Diebler wins a few games down the stretch, Ohio State misses the NCAA Tournament once again, and then Diebler and the entire men’s basketball staff were laid off as the search for a new coach commenced.
But then the Purdue game happened, and every person who follows Ohio State basketball suddenly had a strong opinion on Jake Diebler’s future. People’s opinions on the 37-year old Gibsonburg native more or less fell in these three categories after the Buckeyes knocked off No. 2 Purdue on Sunday:
- Make Diebler the head coach right now, remove the interim tag! (Wildly optimistic)
- If he can win five or six games and really impress us, Diebler deserves the job. (More measured, reasonable)
- Diebler is an extension of Holtmann, and is tainted by his old boss’s failures. The program needs to cleanse itself of everything that had to do with Chris Holtmann. (Spiteful, angry, illogical)
But after watching Diebler out-coach Matt Painter, the owner of four Big Ten titles and two Big Ten Tournament titles at Purdue, it made me think that Diebler does need to be on this staff next season. And after watching his interview with CBS’s Jim Spanarkel and sitting in Diebler’s post-game press conference, I walked out of the arena with a very strong conviction that the next coach — whoever it is — would be wise to make sure Diebler is on his staff.
Here’s why:
Reason 1: He’s loved by his players and could keep the core of this team together
Even if the team has been bad, there are good players on this roster that an incoming coach would love to have at his disposal in year one. Bruce Thornton is obviously the big one — if he opts to transfer, he will be able to pick which program he wants to play for next year and go there. But Roddy Gayle, Evan Mahaffey, Devin Royal, and Scotty Middleton could also be foundational pieces that the next coach would like to keep around.
All of the freshmen and sophomores on this team speak highly of Diebler. “Coach Diebler” or “Coach Diebs” was the main recruiter for most of them, and they respect him just as much as they do Holtmann. After the Purdue game, the “CBB on Fox” social media accounts posted a video of Diebler falling to his knees as the final buzzer sounded and the Buckeyes had secured a win over Purdue. Several players on the team, including Thornton, Gayle, Middleton, Jamison Battle, and Zed Key, shared it on their own Instagram accounts and added hearts or messages like “Coach Diebs!”
If you’ve spent any time at all following this team, you know how much he means to the players as a coach, mentor, and friend. Keeping him on staff would increase the odds of keeping the core of this team intact.
Reason 2: He is the main recruiter on several four and five-star recruits in the class of 2025 that will not commit to Ohio State if he leaves
At his first press conference as interim head coach, Diebler said that, for the moment, his energy has to be spent on the current team and the guys who are already committed to playing for Ohio State (Juni Mobley and Colin White). He said that any time spent recruiting beyond that would be doing a disservice to the guys already in the locker room.
Translation: We’re not going to spend time recruiting over these final four weeks when this staff is not going to be here in four weeks anyway.
It’s important to note that Ohio State has been pursuing three top-50 guards in the class of 2025, and the odds of one or more of them becoming Buckeyes seemed pretty high before Holtmann was fired. Of course, Diebler is knows all three guys very well at this point — Dorian Jones (No. 50, Richmond Heights), Jerry Easter Jr. (No. 26, La Lumiere), and Darryn Peterson (No. 3, Huntington Prep).
Not only is Diebler a recruiting asset in general as shown by the guys Ohio State has brought in over the last few years (No. 8 class in 2022, No. 12 class in 2023), but the Buckeyes will have no chance to pick up any of those elite prospects if Diebler goes elsewhere.
Reason 3: He’s been a solid “offensive coordinator” for two years
When Ryan Pedon left and took the Illinois State job, Diebler was promoted to Pedon’s old position — associate head coach and offensive coordinator. There have been individual games where Ohio State’s offense has gone stagnant, and the Buckeyes are prone to the occasional four or five-minute scoreless spell.
But in general, Ohio State’s offense has been average to above average under Diebler these last two years. The Buckeyes were bad last year, but the blame is mostly placed on defensive woes. Last year when they finished 16-19, Ohio State was still No. 19 nationally in offensive efficiency — better than teams such as Alabama, Creighton, and Kansas. Ohio State was No. 106 nationally in adjusted defensive effiency.
This season, Ohio State is No. 39 in offensive efficiency — its lowest rating since the 2018-2019 season. Still, top-40 is nothing to sneeze at. It’s not elite, but there are plenty of NCAA Tournament-caliber teams with OER’s in the 30’s and 40’s this year — Michigan State, Northwestern, and Kansas, to name a few.
In two years, Diebler’s helped coach one above average offense and another that’s been much closer to “average” or “fine” than “bad”.
Reason 4: Ohio State basketball means so much to him
The son of a longtime high school basketball coach in northwest Ohio and the brother of the best three-point shooter in Ohio State men’s basketball history, Diebler’s family has a long history with basketball in the state of Ohio. Diebler worked as a video coordinator for Thad Matta at Ohio State from 2013-2016, and then worked at Vanderbilt as an assistant for three seasons before Holtmann hired him in 2019. He now has eight years under his belt working for this program, and he’s said multiple times that it’s an “honor” to come to work every day.
Everything else aside, wouldn’t a new coach want at least one person on staff with a deep connection to the program and the Ohio basketball scene at large? Wouldn’t it be important to keep someone around who has a deep understanding of the rich history and expectations of one of the storied programs in college basketball?
Even without reasons 1-3, this feels like a big incentive to try and retain him all on its own.
Continue reading...