The Ohio State basketball team started the 2019-2020 season out white-hot, jumping out to a 9-0 start that included wins over Cincinnati, Villanova, and at North Carolina. The Buckeyes made it all the way up to a No. 2 ranking before the Big Ten season hit. It was jubilation and the national media began discussing the Buckeyes as a final four, national title contender.
Then the scarlet and gray wheels fell off.
A season on the decline
Ohio State went into a tail-spin in January, losing six of seven and falling to 2-6, just one spot from the cellar in the rough and tumble Big Ten Conference. The Buckeyes went from a potential No. 1 or No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament, to close to bubble territory. It seemed Chris Holtmann couldn’t pull the right strings no matter what he did.
Then further adversity struck in the way of personnel. The team lost an extremely talented freshman that was averaging about 25 minutes a game when D.J. Carton took a leave of absence. Glue guy Kyle Young missed time with appendicitis and surgery to correct it. The team couldn’t take care of the basketball and didn’t have the tough mindset needed to contend in the Big Ten.
And you could read it on Holtmann’s face at press conferences. You could almost feel it too. The hunt for a Big Ten title was over before it even got started, and all the team had left to play for was the shot at catching lightning in a bottle in the postseason — if it even made it to a postseason close to its team goals before the start of the campaign.
The media jumped on the team, wondering what was wrong. Fans began calling for Holtmann’s job as a knee-jerk reaction many of us around here have become too accustomed to.
Where are all those Tweets and sound bites now?
Next … The remarkable turnaround
They’re gone because this team has turned it around, and done so in miraculous fashion. Carton is still doing what he needs to in order to be mentally healthy. Kyle Young is out again, this time recovering from a high ankle sprain that is only mildly getting better with time.
A guy that could have provided a little depth, Alonzo Gaffney, is now also out with an unknown ailment. There’s no telling when any of them will be back. And that’s before we even remind everyone that the team lost the services of Musa Jallow to injury before the seal was even broken on the season.
Yet somehow, someway, Ohio State continues to win. It continues to win with a very thin bench, some unproven players, and juggled pieces that have had to fit into places they weren’t supposed to go. The team has now won nine of its last eleven games in the toughest conference in America.
During that stretch, the Buckeyes have won three games on the road in a conference that surrenders them about as often as Jim Harbaugh gets a bowl win up at Michigan. Okay, maybe it happens a little more than that, but you get the idea.
Ohio State has also beaten four ranked teams (Michigan twice), including a victory over No. 7 Maryland just a couple of weeks ago. It also just spoiled Illinois’ chances of a league title with a dominating second half and subsequent 71-63 win.
It’s been the turnaround of all turnarounds in Columbus, and it’s hard to figure out how it’s all happened. The team is turning the ball over less, is shooting much better, and all the pieces seemed to have settled into their roles. The reality is that this team has banked the odds with what it has done over the last five weeks or so.
Next … Credit where credit is due
And if we’re being fair, just as Holtmann got a mountain of criticism during that January sewage spill, he deserves just as much credit for what this team has become as of late. When everything was going nowhere but south, Holtmann kept the paddles in the water, kept coaching, kept tinkering, and all of a sudden, Ohio State looks like a No. 5 or No. 6 seed in the NCAA Tournament. There aren’t any opposing coaches that want to see the Buckeyes in their bracket raising their hands either.
If there’s one thing Holtmann has shown us during his first three seasons in Columbus, it’s that he can squeeze the last bit of juice out of lemons. There’s no way his first team should have contended for a Big Ten Championship, yet somehow it did. Last year’s squad had no business making the NCAA Tournament. It not only did that, but upped the ante by springing an upset of Iowa State to get to the second round.
The story is still being written on the 2020 postseason, but either way you look at it now, it’s been an incredible coaching job during a season that’s had more peaks and valleys than a volcanic island nation.
The bottom line is that this team has turned around because of the guidance of Chris Hotlmann. Anyone saying any different isn’t giving him his due for all the motivating, prodding, and composure he’s shown this season.
It’s time he gets recognized for it no matter what happens from here on out.
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