Good God, what a frustrating season this has been and looks to continue to be.

I say "frustrating" specifically because if this team and roster were just flat out bad, it would suck, sure, but it wouldn't necessarily be as frustrating as this. We would have written it up as a lost cause very early in the season and moved on with our lives.

I think most of us are well at that point now but what's agonizing is that we've seen enough to know that this team is capable of a lot more than what it has delivered. We saw that Sueing could be a valuable third or fourth guy when he was healthy a couple years ago. We saw what Key looked like before he left the Purdue game. We can go over the numbers of our transfers before they came here. We can see that Brice Sensabaugh is our second straight unexpected one-and-done and an offensive wunderkind. We know how much potential the other freshmen have. We saw how we blew out Cincinatti, beat Texas Tech, walloped all the buy-game teams, and came up JUST short in multiple games against good competition, thinking oh maybe luck will break our way soon.

After the Purdue loss I wrote Holtmann was the master of "close but no cigar" and felt pretty down about what was to come because I knew what continually losing games like that can do to the team psychology and spirit. But I'm not sure I would have predicted us losing every single game since then except Iowa.

I don't think Holtmann was a "bad" coach. I don't think you can do what he did at Butler or win B1G Coach of the Year with a scrapped together roster or earn a #2 seed while playing in a loaded B1G with only a couple 4-stars in your rotation and be a straight up "bad" coach. That said, this season has been a travesty and you can't point anywhere other than him for the lion's share of the blame. Getting through to your guys and getting them on the same page and executing is a big part of coaching, and Holtmann has utterly failed in that regard this season. Roster construction, too, is very questionable... but it's hard for me to even evaluate that fully because I really do think this roster is capable of more. But the coaches aren't putting that roster in a position to succeed. We needed to figure out our best rotation prior to conference play. We needed to know our next moves and counters once the scouting reports caught up with us. And I feel like we did none of that.

And that's why I am sitting here and feeling like I haven't been this frustrated with an OSU men's basketball team since I don't even know when. Thad's last two seasons, we knew early on things weren't going to go well. And, ultimately, both seasons I felt like the teams basically just weren't good teams and Thad and his mediocre assistants at the time didn't have the juice to make something out of nothing. But this feels different to me. There's a reason the analytics still liked our team long after our overall record was approaching .500 -- because this team should not be losing THIS much.

Wisconsin is NOT a good basketball team this year. And we let them own us in our house last night. Until they started playing like the bad team they are and let us back in it... and we STILL found a way to lose. The losing is like a virus that won't let go of this team, no matter what they should actually be capable of doing.

I think it is pretty clear that Gene will not fire Holtmann after this season. But last night I saw the guys play for Diebler like they actually cared what Diebler wanted them to do. It doesn't matter what Holtmann has or lacks strategically--if the guys aren't gonna give him everything they've got, then it's pointless. 

It's pretty difficult to see a happy path out of this mess. I honestly think it would be in Holtmann's best interests to get a fresh start at a different school--and, you know what, I think he would do well. But here I think there is too much negative energy around the program and too little buy-in from the players towards him. These guys could come out next season and look like a completely different entity--even if playing in the same system--if they are playing for a coach they believe in. To me, the most obvious answer is give Diebler a shot. He would keep most of the 2022 and 2023 recruits here and they would give him their best play. If he fails, he fails, but at least you tried something that prevented you having to start over from scratch.

Unfortunately, I don't know if OSU will feel like they are in a good position to fire Holtmann any sooner than the end of next season. And I'm not ruling out the possibility that Holtmann gets things back on track next season--but once faith is shaken to this degree, it's hard to want to continue with a guy you feel like the players might not be playing for and who can't seem to stop coming up short here in various ways. Like, things could easily get better, but because of how Holtmann builds his teams and his whole approach, are we ALWAYS gonna have to deal with these debilitating swoons in conference play that prevent us from ever winning the conference and impact our Dance seeding, usually, to the point that we're often playing a great team in the Round of 32?

Anyways, sorry for the rant. I'm done.