The Ohio State men’s basketball coaching job has been open since Valentines Day, when Chris Holtmann was fired. Heart emoji. Associate head coach Jake Diebler took over on an interim basis, and if he wins the Big Ten Tournament, maybe he’ll get an interview. Do not blithely dismiss such a thing: Under Diebler, the Buckeyes are 5-1 with a home victory over then-No. 2 Purdue and road victories over Michigan State and Rutgers heading into their second-round conference tournament game against Iowa Thursday evening.
Ohio State is a flagship university, for good or ill. The question is, though, is it a great basketball job? OSU has won one NCAA tournament title since 1939. UConn has won five in the past 25 years, and they’re in the major metropolis of Storrs, population 15,980, about the size of the OSU athletic department.
Ohio State’s tradition is football. This does not necessarily mean that the basketball job is not attractive. It is, given the athletic department’s enormous resources and its conference affiliation. For any college coach trying to plot a career in a major sport, getting to the Big Ten or the SEC is the right path. The two preeminent football conferences are consolidating football money, and they will ultimately crush the other power conferences. USC, UCLA, Texas and Oklahoma understand this.
Ohio State has a new president in Ted Carter, who had a sterling career in the Navy, and an incoming athletic director in Ross Bjork, who survived scandal at Ole Miss and somehow got hired at Texas A&M. When Gene Smith officially steps down on June 30, Bjork will hold what may be the most prominent AD post in the country. Bjork looks great in a suit.
While at A&M, Bjork and the school’s Board of Regents were responsible for the most expensive bungle in the history of college sports – the 10-year contract extension of football coach Jimbo Fisher, signed in 2021, and the $77.5-million buyout due to Fisher after he was fired in 2023. Golly. Holtmann’s buyout was only $12.8 million. Skid row.
The hiring of the next basketball coach at Ohio State will tell us something about Bjork and his new boss, president Carter. Bjork needs to find a basketball coach who is comfortable and will thrive in the shadow of the football program. If money is no object – and with Bjork, it doesn’t seem to be – then Baylor’s Scott Drew would be the perfect candidate. What will Carter do?
In the heart of Texas, Drew, 53, took a moribund-to-shambolic basketball program and built it into a powerhouse. He’s a recruiting dynamo. His teams win 20-30 games a year and they’re regulars at the Big Dance. In 2021, they won the NCAA title.
Reportedly, Drew makes a relatively paltry $3.1 million per year, and it is said he would at least listen if Louisville, which also has a coaching vacancy, gave him a call. Nobody other than Drew has any idea if Drew will ever leave Waco, but if Bjork can lure Drew to Columbus, it would be the biggest hire in the history of the Ohio State program. Maybe, cavernous Value City Arena would be filled more than two or three times a season.
Such a scenario – hiring one of the best basketball coaches in the nation and filling Value City Arena more than two or three times a season – is not likely. Ex-Ohio State players seem to want Chris Jent, who played for the Buckeyes, served on Thad Matta’s staff and currently works as an assistant for the LA Lakers. The speculators, and I am among them here, have thrown out names such as Creighton’s Greg McDermott, Colorado State’s Nico Medved, Kansas State’s Jerome Tang, Oklahoma’s Porter Moser …
Two names that keep popping up in these vapid conversations are Xavier’s Sean Miller and Florida Atlantic’s Dusty May. Personally, I wouldn’t go near Miller, who had one of the elite, resource-rich hoops jobs in America when he was at Arizona. Not only did he fail to get the ‘Cats beyond the Elite Eight over 12 seasons, he left amid scandal, and his assistants paid the price. But you never know. Maybe Bjork loves Miller. Gah.
The way to go is to hire a talented, 30- or 40-something who is energetic, can live with football, understands the Midwest and the Big Ten and can recruit, like Thad Matta, who was 37 when he was hired by Smith in 2004. Relating to players and earning their respect begins with Xs and Os and expands to encompass the human condition.
May, 47, grew up in Illinois and was a student manager under Knight at Indiana. He took Florida Atlantic to the Final Four last year. Iowa State’s T.J. Otzelberger, 46, from Milwaukee, is another prospect. So is Charleston’s Pat Kelsey, 48, who is a hot, mid-major mentionable.
The hope here is that Bjork listens well to the ex-players and gives Jent a healthy opportunity to distinguish his candidacy.
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: In the shadow of BIG football, Ohio State looks for a basketball coach
