It would test your manhood…Ohio State’s Jamison Battle scores over Virginia Tech’s Robbie Beran. (Press Pros Feature Photos)
In a disjointed game with lots of whistles, Ohio State took advantage of its opportunities at the free throw line to hold off Virginia Tech and move on in the National Invitation Tournament.
Columbus, OH – Despite the prestige that accompanies advancing to the NIT quarterfinals (wink, wink), the particulars of Ohio State moving to that level likely won’t predict the long-term future of the program as much as something that happened 200 miles away on Saturday night.
Scarcely 20 minutes after the Buckeyes’ dispatched Virginia Tech, 81-73, reports began surfacing that Michigan has hired Florida Atlantic’s Dusty May as its next head basketball coach.
While the OSU-Michigan rivalry has had its moments over the past few decades, it’s about to get – and stay – extremely interesting for as many years as it takes for one of the storied football adversaries to recognize it hired the wrong guy to coach its basketball team.
Veteran columnist Bruce Hooley writes Ohio State basketball and sports at large for Press Pros Magazine.com.
Everything looks great for the Buckeyes right now, of course, with the win over Virginia Tech making once-interim-now-permanent head coach Jake Diebler 8-2 since taking over for the fired Chris Holtmann.
OSU was 2-8 in Holtmann’s last 10 games, so it’s inarguable that Diebler has done a tremendous job turning around a season that had gone horribly off course.
This latest win advances Ohio State (22-13) to a Tuesday NIT quarterfinal matchup with the winner of a Sunday game between Georgia and Wake Forest. If Georgia wins, OSU would host. If Wake wins, OSU will travel to Winston Salem, N.C.
Tough in the paint, Felix Okpara scores two of his twelve points in Saturday’s win over Virginia Tech.
It will be much more interesting long term, with May now at Michigan, to see if Diebler can do the hard things every accomplished head coach must in this era of college basketball that is unlike any other because of immediate transfer eligibility and NIL millions.
Two-time NCAA Champion coach Jay Wright addressed how the game has changed – and how coaches must change with it – after Kentucky’s stunning loss to Oakland in the NCAA’s first round.
“The era of taking these young freshmen and trying to play against older players is over,” Wright said. “…The guys on Kentucky will be far better pros than any of these guys on Oakland or any of these guys in the tournament. But they’re not as good college basketball players. At this point in their career, they’re not as disciplined yet as the guys from Oakland.
“It’s not (UK coach John Calipari’s) fault. It’s they’re 18 years old, and they’re in this era where everyone’s telling them how great they are. Just show up in college and you’re gonna win. It doesn’t happen that way. And the more the guys stay in college because of NIL, it’s gonna be tougher for young teams like this to be successful.”
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You might remember, OSU athletic director Gene Smith talked Holtmann into riding out his sixth and seventh seasons with freshmen- and sophomore-laden rosters.
Now it’s for Diebler to decide if those young players – Bruce Thornton, Roddy Gayle, Felix Okpara, Evan Mahaffey, Bowen Hardman, Taison Chatman, Scotty Middleton, Devin Royal, Austin Parks, Kalen Etzler – are the kind of talent needed to win a Big Ten championship and end a two-year NCAA Tournament drought.
Incoming…Bruce Thornton launches a pass in transition that helped the Buckeyes build a double lead in the first half.
Or, will Diebler have the foresight to accurately predict which players he should ride with, and which he should steer elsewhere because they simply don’t bring what the Buckeyes will need to challenge for achievements they never approached under Holtmann.
Those will be tough conversations for Diebler, assuming he even has the awareness to know their necessity, because this is the group that got him the gig as Holtmann’s replacement. OSU surprisingly ended its “search” before the NCAA Tournament began and its field of candidates widened considerably.
May unquestionably knows what an elite player looks like, and he’ll have ample resources to bring them to Ann Arbor. And those who question his ability to build something from nothing – which is what fired UM coach Juwan Howard left him – need only look at Florida Atlantic’s record under his direction.
The Owls had seven consecutive losing seasons before his arrival in 2018-19, but never finished under .500 in any of his six seasons. FAU made the Final Four last year and lost to Northwestern in overtime in the first round this year.
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Some OSU fans exulted in May’s first-round exit on Thursday to affirm their certainty Diebler was a superior hire, apparently forgetting that OSU fell just 25 points short of forcing Northwestern to overtime when the teams met in Evanston on Jan. 28.
The players who contributed to that debacle are the ones Diebler must evaluate whenever this NIT run ends. Then it will be time to determine if they’re just young and will improve dramatically, or just average and capable only of 20-10-ish seasons that would permanently doom the Buckeyes to the NCAA bubble.
Devin Royal scores in the most secure way possible during the Buckeyes’ 81-73 NIT win over Va. Tech.
Oh, the Transfer Portal is open now and the clock is ticking.
Diebler surely sounds in love with his team at this juncture, after senior transfer Jamison Battle scored 17 of his 21 points at the free throw line and four teammates joined him in double figures to defeat Virginia Tech.
OSU fell behind, 7-0, at the outset, but roared back to lead, 36-26 at the half.
It held that margin most of the second half until the Hokies closed within 67-64 with just under five minutes to play.
That rally disintegrated with Tech turning it over four times on its next five possessions, allowing Ohio State to gain separation at the free throw line in a second half that featured 32 fouls and 45 combined free throws.
“We went into the last timeout and said, ‘Hey, we need to stay aggressive,’ ” Diebler said. “We wanted to stay aggressive. Our guys have embraced that mentality. It’s who this team is. It’s who we’re going to be moving forward, the rest of this season and beyond. So, I’m really proud of them.”
Gayle sat out 10 minutes in the second half with an injured hand and Thornton took a knee to the thigh and sat out most of the last two minutes.
“We had some guys who really stepped up,” Diebler said. “It speaks to the depth of this team and the collective mentality and toughness. (Thornton and Gayle) are really special players, but we have a lot of depth, a lot of really talented special players. These last four or five weeks we’ve continued to show that.”
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