Much speculation has surrounded the potential firing of Ohio State men’s basketball head coach Chris Holtmann. Has his time in Columbus come to an end? Photo Credit: Caleb Blake | Photo Editor. Graphic: Josie Stewart | Managing Editor for Content
This is the perspective of Sam Becker, a second-year in political science, who reports for The Lantern.
It’s time to have a discussion.
Chris Holtmann has been the head coach of the Ohio State men’s basketball team since 2017. He has taken the program to moderate heights and disheartening lows.
Now, the Schottenstein Center is the home to a corpse of a program.
And if the team is a decomposing corpse, Ohio State men’s basketball games this season have been a funeral with nobody in attendance.
Ohio State athletics is on the brink of modernization, with new athletic director Ross Bjork in town to shepherd this new era. In the process of ushering in this new name, image and likeness-centric era of athletics, Ohio State and Holtmann may need to part ways.
To preface, calling for someone’s job should never be said lightly.
However, Ohio State fans have been calling for Holtmann’s firing since 2020, when the team went 2-5 in January — a theme that’s persisted during his tenure.
However, cooler heads prevailed as the Buckeyes turned things around later on, and Holtmann’s job was as secure as ever.
Holtmann was given a mulligan, because the 2-5 record in January 2020 was essentially chalked up as a fluke. But was it?
January is typically the month that Big Ten conference play truly begins. It is also the time when Buckeye teams under Holtmann have floundered, repeatedly. Holtmann’s teams are a combined 18-29 in January since 2019.
It is also important to keep in mind that before January, the team under Holtmann had been a true top-25 team in the country. The 2019-20 team was 11-1, the 2021-22 team was 9-2, the 2022-23 team was 10-3 and this year the Buckeyes went an impressive 12-2 before the mark of the new calendar year.
The team has even beaten legitimate out-of-conference opponents like No. 1 Duke (2021) and No. 6 Kentucky (2019) before its typical disintegration in January.
So what does this repeated January collapse mean for Holtmann and the program?
It means these teams have been talented enough to compete with some of the top basketball powers in the nation. But as the season wears on, the team has gotten worn out — every single year. The physical play of the Big Ten takes a toll on most teams within the league, but Ohio State has always looked particularly unprepared for conference play.
Under Holtmann, the men’s basketball team has consistently given fans hope that this would be the year to break the curse. Beating good out-of-conference teams has only served as a glimpse of “what could have been,” because the Ohio State squads after December passes is a far-cry from the one seen in the previous months.
The talent is there, and we have seen flashes of greatness, which have ultimately died out due to the fatigue of a long season. This can only be attributed to one thing: coaching.
This is a fractured program and a change in leadership is needed. What’s worse? Holtmann is a genuinely good guy, respected by coaches and players alike. In fact, he is a phenomenal recruiter, and the players would likely hate to see him go, some may even transfer.
However, actions speak louder than words. The players say they are bought into the culture and Holtmann is the best man for the job, but their play suggests otherwise. This is a program that wilts, even at its best, when the pressure is turned on.
Holtmann has coached two teams that particularly stand out as successful: the 2017-18 and the 2020-21 teams.
In 2017-18, it was Holtmann’s first year as head coach, and the team essentially breezed through the Big Ten courtesy of the play of veteran holdovers from the Thad Matta, Holtmann’s predecessor, era. They lost to a buzzsaw Gonzaga team in the second round, but no one was displeased with the direction of the program.
If 2017-18 was the beginning, it might be fitting to call the 2020-21 season the end of the Holtmann era.
The team made the tournament as the No. 2 seed, but with Holtmann’s recruits this time. However, the cracks in the system were exposed once the Buckeyes met 15-seed Oral Roberts in the first round. With the entire country watching, the Holtmann-coached Buckeyes were handed one of the most embarrassing losses in Ohio State athletics history.
The program, and Holtmann for that matter, have never been the same since. The 2021-22 team played a bland, rudderless style, lucking into a first round win against an equally incompetent Loyola-Chicago team before being handled by Villanova.
In the 2022-23 season and this current one, the Buckeyes are likely to miss March Madness and possibly even the National Invitational Tournament, while becoming basement-dwellers of the Big Ten. Additionally, the team has set attendance records — in the wrong way — for each of the past two years.
There is no doubt that Holtmann is a beloved coach to his players, but this is Ohio State.
The paper tiger of a team that has taken the court for the Buckeyes during the Holtmann era is unacceptable and beneath the expectations. This is a program that was competing for national championships under Matta.
Right now, it is an inarguable fact that Ohio State is purely a “football school.” But it was not always like that, and it should not be that way.
In the new age of college athletics, the message is loud and clear: adapt or get left behind. With athletic director Gene Smith on his way out, Bjork has an immediate opportunity to make a statement on what the standard is at Ohio State, and he can do this by parting ways with Holtmann.
