Michael Citro
Guest
Jake Diebler’s success shows Holtmann firing may have come too late
Michael Citro via our friends at Land-Grant Holy Land
Visit their fantastic blog and read the full article (and so much more) here
Joseph Maiorana-USA TODAY Sports
Waiting too long to do what had to be done may have cost the Buckeyes a better shot at the NCAA Tournament.
The Buckeyes closed the 2024 regular season home slate Sunday with a blowout win over rival Michigan on Senior Day. The win was more than simply revenge for a loss at Ann Arbor earlier in the season. It was more than Jake Diebler’s fourth win in five games as interim coach since the firing of Chris Holtmann.
Ultimately, when combined with three others in the previous four games, the win stands as evidence that Holtmann’s firing was not only necessary but it also may have been delayed too long to salvage the 2023-24 OSU men’s basketball season.
There are multiple popular sayings when it comes to discussing whether or not to replace a coach. One school of thought is that you don’t fire a coach until you’ve lined up someone better as a replacement. Another old adage is that the time to make a coaching move is as soon as you think one is necessary.
The second saying holds some merit if you expect that a shakeup will jar a team out of lethargy because with more games ahead of the team, there are more opportunities to turn results around. Doing it earlier rather than later is also smart if you expect the move to snap a team out of a lethargic run of results, like those we saw out of the Buckeyes throughout January and the first half of February.
Shortly after the calendar changed from 2023 to 2024 it became painfully obvious — even to the most optimistic Holtmann fan — that the Buckeyes would need to move on from their coach. Yet, the move was delayed for weeks, and so the Buckeyes continued to pile up loss after loss under Holtmann, missing opportunities to climb the Big Ten standings and perhaps a chance to secure a spot in the NCAA Tournament.
(Full disclosure: I like Chris Holtmann. I find him engaging in interviews and I think he has the right temperament to be a head coach at Ohio State. He’s also been successful. At the same time, there was just no way he was going to survive the season, and as such, the band-aid should have been ripped off quickly and as soon as it possibly could be.)
Ohio State still has a path to the NCAA Tournament, but it’s a difficult road. Perhaps it didn’t have to be. The Buckeyes have responded well to Diebler’s confidence and his aggressive approach. While there’s no way to know if that would have played well over two or three additional weeks of the season, Ohio State was going nowhere under Holtmann, and everyone knew it — the media, the fans, the players, and probably even Holtmann himself.
And, if the team was going nowhere under Holtmann, that means Ohio State could have made the move earlier and perhaps have gotten the proverbial “new coach bump” early enough to compile a record worthy of securing a tourney spot. Again, it’s not a guarantee, just a chance, and that’s more than what the Buckeyes had as Holtmann struggled to find answers to his team’s poor defense and struggling outside shooting.
Had Holtmann been let go after the home loss to Illinois at the end of January (for example), perhaps the team’s turnaround under Diebler would have happened sooner. The team lost three of its next four after that Illinois loss with Holtmann still at the helm. If Diebler had been given the opportunity earlier, it’s possible he could have turned those three losses into wins.
If he’d only turned two of the three losses into wins (and, again, there’s no guarantee he would have), the Buckeyes would be 10-9 in Big Ten play and have 20 wins on the season. Even a moderate run in the tournament likely puts the Buckeyes into the tournament field.
Since Diebler took over, the Buckeyes have been looking more like the team we saw over the season’s first couple of months. He’s coached his way into contention to get a shot at the job full-time. That would be quite a story. An even better story would be a conference tournament title and an automatic bid to this year’s NCAA Tournament. That doesn’t seem nearly as farfetched now as it did before Holtmann was relieved of his coaching duties.
And that’s why it should have happened sooner.
Continue reading...
Michael Citro via our friends at Land-Grant Holy Land
Visit their fantastic blog and read the full article (and so much more) here
Joseph Maiorana-USA TODAY Sports
Waiting too long to do what had to be done may have cost the Buckeyes a better shot at the NCAA Tournament.
The Buckeyes closed the 2024 regular season home slate Sunday with a blowout win over rival Michigan on Senior Day. The win was more than simply revenge for a loss at Ann Arbor earlier in the season. It was more than Jake Diebler’s fourth win in five games as interim coach since the firing of Chris Holtmann.
Ultimately, when combined with three others in the previous four games, the win stands as evidence that Holtmann’s firing was not only necessary but it also may have been delayed too long to salvage the 2023-24 OSU men’s basketball season.
There are multiple popular sayings when it comes to discussing whether or not to replace a coach. One school of thought is that you don’t fire a coach until you’ve lined up someone better as a replacement. Another old adage is that the time to make a coaching move is as soon as you think one is necessary.
The second saying holds some merit if you expect that a shakeup will jar a team out of lethargy because with more games ahead of the team, there are more opportunities to turn results around. Doing it earlier rather than later is also smart if you expect the move to snap a team out of a lethargic run of results, like those we saw out of the Buckeyes throughout January and the first half of February.
Shortly after the calendar changed from 2023 to 2024 it became painfully obvious — even to the most optimistic Holtmann fan — that the Buckeyes would need to move on from their coach. Yet, the move was delayed for weeks, and so the Buckeyes continued to pile up loss after loss under Holtmann, missing opportunities to climb the Big Ten standings and perhaps a chance to secure a spot in the NCAA Tournament.
(Full disclosure: I like Chris Holtmann. I find him engaging in interviews and I think he has the right temperament to be a head coach at Ohio State. He’s also been successful. At the same time, there was just no way he was going to survive the season, and as such, the band-aid should have been ripped off quickly and as soon as it possibly could be.)
Ohio State still has a path to the NCAA Tournament, but it’s a difficult road. Perhaps it didn’t have to be. The Buckeyes have responded well to Diebler’s confidence and his aggressive approach. While there’s no way to know if that would have played well over two or three additional weeks of the season, Ohio State was going nowhere under Holtmann, and everyone knew it — the media, the fans, the players, and probably even Holtmann himself.
And, if the team was going nowhere under Holtmann, that means Ohio State could have made the move earlier and perhaps have gotten the proverbial “new coach bump” early enough to compile a record worthy of securing a tourney spot. Again, it’s not a guarantee, just a chance, and that’s more than what the Buckeyes had as Holtmann struggled to find answers to his team’s poor defense and struggling outside shooting.
Had Holtmann been let go after the home loss to Illinois at the end of January (for example), perhaps the team’s turnaround under Diebler would have happened sooner. The team lost three of its next four after that Illinois loss with Holtmann still at the helm. If Diebler had been given the opportunity earlier, it’s possible he could have turned those three losses into wins.
If he’d only turned two of the three losses into wins (and, again, there’s no guarantee he would have), the Buckeyes would be 10-9 in Big Ten play and have 20 wins on the season. Even a moderate run in the tournament likely puts the Buckeyes into the tournament field.
Since Diebler took over, the Buckeyes have been looking more like the team we saw over the season’s first couple of months. He’s coached his way into contention to get a shot at the job full-time. That would be quite a story. An even better story would be a conference tournament title and an automatic bid to this year’s NCAA Tournament. That doesn’t seem nearly as farfetched now as it did before Holtmann was relieved of his coaching duties.
And that’s why it should have happened sooner.
Continue reading...