OSU Men's Basketball Recruiting/Projections/General Discussions

[NFBuck]

I did not realize that you followed basketball recruiting so closely. The only guy that I am aware of that Ohio State is involved with for 2019 is Francis. Perhaps you can enlighten me on what other players they are involved with, or even available, for 2019. I do not have premium access to other sites and I do not know if you are getting that information from one of those sites or not but I would be interested in why you think 2019 is superior to 2018 with regard to recruits.
If you only take 3-4 guys in 2018 and you expect to make some noise in 2019-20, I do not see how you are going to do that when you are saving your scholarships for the 2019 class. As I have stated and I am sure that you are aware, these guys do take some time to develop unless they are 5* and they say bye-bye in one year.

Honestly, I haven't followed round ball recruiting all that closely the past few years, so I'm not fully up to speed. The 2015 class debacle soured me on it. And honestly, I find basketball recruiting kind of skeevy with all of the aau nonsense and "agents" tied to the top players. But, I am trying to catch up on tOSU targets.

As for how we get to "competitive" in 2019-20...I'm taking the proverbial "trust the coaches" stance. I have a pretty high opinion (along with many others) of Holtmann's coaching acumen, and I think he recruited pretty well at Butler for a smaller program. I believe he knows what he's doing.

And again, I'm not.goimg to get too hung up on him saying they might only take three guys in 2018. These guys are good coaches with strong resumes. I'm sure if they feel they need more than three, they'll take more than three. He's been on the job < two weeks. There's not anything remotely near enough data to form anything resembling an opinion thus far. I just know he was quite successful at Butler, and has many smart people that sing his praises. That's enough for me for now.

 

[DZ83CK]

And so far at OSU he has gotten a coup of sorts by getting Kyle Young on the team for this season. It's not like Chris hasn't done anything for OSU yet. I like the direction he is heading with recruiting, the guys he is offering and their skills.

 

[OUatl]

I agree trust the coaches.. I feel like we hired the right guy. Lets sit back and enjoy the ride.

 

[LitlBuck]

More clarification on Holtmann's recruiting for 2018
There are five spots available for 2018 right now, but Holtmann said the Buckeyes likely won't use all of them. Here's what Holtmann said last week about managing the scholarship spots:

"Very rarely will we have 13 guys who are eligible to play on scholarship. It's too hard to keep that number happy. You can't do it. It leads to turnover. You're gonna have turnover anyway because it's the nature of the beast right now. There could be some unique circumstances that could lead to us using all of them, but I think once we feel really good about where we're at in recruiting and where our roster is numbers-wise, I don't know that we'll have more than 10 or 11 players. You might have 10 that are eligible to play and then one who's a transfer sitting out, or 11 and 12.

"Early on we could potentially end up using all of them and maybe redshirting one. We'll have more flexibility early because we need to be flexible."
http://www.cleveland.com/osu/2017/06/eric_hunter_puts_buckeyes_in_t.html#incart_river_index

 

[HabaneroBuck]

I completely disagree with Coach Holtmann on this line of reasoning. Most big-time teams actually list 15, 16, or 17 players on their MBB rosters. You use all thirteen of your scholarships, even if that means recruiting a player or two who isn't quite B1G-starter quality. I agree that maybe the thirteenth spot isn't vital, but the more good players you get into your program, the more your team is going to be pushed and have lots of options.

It's one thing if you're Kentucky and Duke, and you need to keep your top 7 or 8 players rotating in because they are all McDonald's players, it's another if you are a standard "good" B1G team. He might not realize it, but there are actually some pretty good players who wouldn't mind spending four years as role players and practice guys in Columbus. We aren't Butler. Think Tom Brandewie, Jimmy Ratliff, Matt Terwilliger, or Evan Ravenel.

 

[LitlBuck]

Think Tom Brandewie, Jimmy Ratliff, Matt Terwilliger, or Evan Ravenel.

Mitch Hass or maybe Haas

 

[DZ83CK]

I agree that over-recruiting is better than under-recruiting. That being said, he is quoting goals to be 1 or 2 under the limit so you are also implying they need, in addition to 13 scholarship players, 2-4 walk-ons per year, and I don't see a need for that.

At this point OSU is nowhere near full, so it's going to be hard for him to fill the roster with guys who are good players right away. Maybe he is looking at it from the standpoint of expecting but not counting on an early departure or two every year, claiming he will not oversign in anticipation of that.

I completely disagree with Coach Holtmann on this line of reasoning. Most big-time teams actually list 15, 16, or 17 players on their MBB rosters. You use all thirteen of your scholarships, even if that means recruiting a player or two who isn't quite B1G-starter quality. I agree that maybe the thirteenth spot isn't vital, but the more good players you get into your program, the more your team is going to be pushed and have lots of options.

It's one thing if you're Kentucky and Duke, and you need to keep your top 7 or 8 players rotating in because they are all McDonald's players, it's another if you are a standard "good" B1G team. He might not realize it, but there are actually some pretty good players who wouldn't mind spending four years as role players and practice guys in Columbus. We aren't Butler. Think Tom Brandewie, Jimmy Ratliff, Matt Terwilliger, or Evan Ravenel.

 

[LitlBuck]

I agree that over-recruiting is better than under-recruiting. That being said, he is quoting goals to be 1 or 2 under the limit so you are also implying they need, in addition to 13 scholarship players, 2-4 walk-ons per year, and I don't see a need for that.

At this point OSU is nowhere near full, so it's going to be hard for him to fill the roster with guys who are good players right away. Maybe he is looking at it from the standpoint of expecting but not counting on an early departure or two every year, claiming he will not oversign in anticipation of that.

I disagree with the philosophy and of all people you should be disagreeing with it quite a bit because you keep on talking about late bloomers in various recruit's threads. We have five scholarships available for 2018 and if he can find 5 quality guys I say bring them all in and let the chips fall where they may for the year after that where we will have at least 2 scholarships available. I may be wrong but I do not see Holtmann bringing in one and bye-bye right away. Maybe he will get a two and bye-bye but I do not even see that. I say use all the scholarships that you can and keep the tank full, get the program back where it should be, and let the chips fall where they may. If guys want to leave, they never wanted to be here in the first place IMO

 

[LitlBuck]

I will not believe any more crystal balls for at least a month because of the coaching change.. Just out of curiosity I checked a number of guys that we have offered and it looks like we are not going to get anyone in 2018 except for Ahrens (100% crystal ball) and Goodwin. Hopefully, the latter will still come but I do not see any way that Ahrens makes it into the 2018 recruiting class. Hunter and Nance both going to ttun and everybody else going someplace else. No one coming to the good guys according to the crystal balls..

 

[Oh8ch]

Crystal balls are not updated daily.

 

[nomatta]

I agree with DZ and I feel like I am interpreting the context of Holtmann's remarks differently than some of you. He wants to build a program with continuity, where he can have a core group of guys grow together and reserves earn bigger roles as they become seasoned. He doesn't want a constant influx and outflux of large groups of players. He's trying to build teams, not just assemblages of personnel. And so his remarks come from recognizing the reality of college basketball and its culture today. Transfers are only increasing, and they happen to EVERY program, even the blue-bloods. It is not often you see a program begin the season with a full scholarship roster of 13 guys, much less 13 guys who are all rotation-worthy. I think this is what Holtmann is saying. He wants to go after guys he believe will be rotation-worthy, that he really thinks have the ability and will have the opportunity to advance up the depth chart (or start high on it). If he's looking at a guy to be the 12th or 13th scholarship and he's thinking, "Well, I hope I never have to actually use that guy," he's not going to recruit that player, it would be a disservice to the player and the program. He's going to use that time and energy recruiting someone else in the next class or somewhere else where those resources are needed.

It sounds like Holtmann would like to average about 3 players per class to help maintain a healthy class balance. But if more than 3 of his offers want to commit and it makes sense from a talent and big picture roster perspective, he will take more. This is a perfectly reasonable way to operate and a lot of good college bball coaches do something similar with their approach. What Holtmann is not going to do is go Crean-crazy and offer a ton of marginal prospects so he can be full or oversigned every year and then watch half those guys transfer out after one or two seasons, meanwhile creating roster confusion and a lack of team chemistry.

As DZ pointed out, we will be lucky to get enough commitments to get to 12 worthy scholarship players for 2018-2019 (especially if we have a transfer or two after 2017-2018, and I wouldn't be surprised), forget about 13.

 

[buckeyemania11]

I will not believe any more crystal balls for at least a month because of the coaching change.. Just out of curiosity I checked a number of guys that we have offered and it looks like we are not going to get anyone in 2018 except for Ahrens (100% crystal ball) and Goodwin. Hopefully, the latter will still come but I do not see any way that Ahrens makes it into the 2018 recruiting class. Hunter and Nance both going to ttun and everybody else going someplace else. No one coming to the good guys according to the crystal balls..

Crystal Balls for basketball seem to not get updated near as often as they do with Football, basketball recruiting isnt really the same spectacle that football is.

 

[OSU_Buckguy]

i can't locate an offer for talen horton-tucker, but he expects to be visiting soon.

Rising Chicago wing Talen Horton-Tucker told CycloneAlert he will take an unofficial visit to Iowa State on Tuesday as part of a tour of several schools he's interested in... Horton-Tucker recently visited Illinois, Northwestern and Saint Louis and his upcoming three trips include Iowa State, Ohio State and Xavier, beginning with the Cyclones on Tuesday.

link


i like talen's game. he's listed as a small forward, but he looks to me like a power guard, if you will. his body is a little sloppy for the backcourt, but the athleticism is there and the playmaking ability is outstanding. you could say he has a little charles barkley in his stature and his game.

ayo has the stars and gets the publicity, but talen will be a match-up nightmare in college.

 

[OSU_Buckguy]

i can't locate an offer for talen horton-tucker, but he expects to be visiting soon.

 

[OUatl]

I just don't see how 252 people are better than him!