Last Saturday would have been Woody Hayes' 113th birthday.
That's how a lot of us will always think of Valentine's Day. Amorous for mainstream greeting card and flowers/chocolate industrial complex reasons, but still eternally romantic because that's when Buckeye football's patriarch made his world debut in Clifton.
The program has been nationally relevant ever since the university took a chance on a 37-year old to change the fortunes for what at the time was known as the Graveyard of Coaches. Five guys over the previous 11 years. Woody ended up sticking around for 28 seasons.
The basketball program hasn't quite been as fortunate. Fred Taylor? The Buckeyes went a full decade without an NCAA Tournament appearance from his decline to Eldon Miller's temporary rebuild. The closest it's ever gotten to a patriarch was Thad Matta.
Two years ago, Ohio State fired his successor on Woody's birthday. Entering that final January, Chris Holtmann's team was 11-2. The Buckeyes were 14-11 when he was terminated. As was the case throughout his seven seasons, the massacre took place prior to Valentine's Day.
Yet another search began immediately, and this web site quickly named 11 (we do this on purpose) possible successors: Creighton's Greg McDermott - the favorite, South Carolina's Lamont Paris, Alabama's Nate Oats, Sean Miller at his second stint with Xavier, Matta at his second stint with Butler, Arkansas' Eric Musselman, UCLA's Mick Cronin, television's Jay Wright, Texas A&M's Buzz Williams and Holtmann assistant Jake Diebler.
Diebler was added at the very end of the list to get Eleven Warriors' list to 11. To wit:
Ohio State isn’t likely to promote internally, but if it does Diebler would be the person to watch. Holtmann’s right-hand man since he was promoted to associate head coach in 2022, he’s the brother of famed former Buckeye sharpshooter Jon Diebler.
Let's borrow Lou Holtz's sentiment during the coaching search which ended up landing on Earle Bruce: You don't want to be the guy who follows Woody - you want to be the guy who follows the guy who follows Woody. For football, that guy ended up being John Cooper.
If you can buy into Matta being the basketball program's patriarch, then this was the search to find the coach who could stabilize the program as a national power, which is exactly what Coop did.
If you don't buy that, just look more broadly at Ohio State basketball. It's a fatherless program.
Taylor won Ohio State's only national title, but his teams finished in the bottom half of a 10-team Big Ten in six of his final 12 seasons. Matta's 2004-16 represents the best dozen in program history, and demonstrates what's possible in Columbus. Taylor's 1959-71 comes in second. That's a quarter-century of enviable basketball.
Harold Olsen probably has the third-best dozen, aided by WWII absences. And there is no fourth best. Mid would be a grading the majority of Ohio State men's basketball history on a curve.
The peaks have been elite and rare. Football has a standard. Basketball has some fond memories.
Feb. 18, 2012; Michigan guard Trey Burke is defended by Ohio State guard Aaron Craft and forward Jared Sullinger in the 2nd half at Crisler Center. Mandatory Credit: Rick Osentoski-Imagn Images
Lynn St. John has Ohio State's superior basketball arena named after him and is in the College Basketball Hall of Fame, but don't look up his record as men's basketball coach (which he handled while also coaching the baseball team and running the athletic department - the man multitasked in ways even Ryan Day would consider unsustainable).
The point is we hold onto relatively fresh memories of the best era this program has ever had when deciding what should be happening right now. Holtmann commemorated his two year termination by beating McDermott - the man Ohio State reported chose to succeed him (he publicly turned down the alleged offer) - in front of 3,700 people, or about a third of what DePaul's arena can hold. The Mid Midseason Classic, watched by few.
DePaul's January looks almost exactly like the standard Holtmann established at Ohio State. They knew what they were buying into, which brings us back to his successor in Columbus who is being held to a Matta-pre-botched-surgery standard.
Diebler is learning how to run a program while running a program. When football chose to do this with Day, it was shocking. Men's basketball? Taylor himself learned how to be a head coach on the job. Same with Randy Ayers, whose success was front-loaded. Eldon Miller and Gary Williams came from Boston College and were not ringers in anyone's rose-colored view.
THAD Matta's 2004-16 represents the best dozen SEASONS in program history AS WELL AS what's possible in Columbus.
Just about every other coach Ohio State has ever hired came from a mid-major, which is to say they were mildly de-risked before taking on one of the most high-exposure lowercase-p prestige jobs the sport has to offer. Hiring a youthful, high esteem assistant to learn how to coach college basketball at a finicky place like Ohio State isn't a terrible idea if you're willing to allow time for growth.
Holtmann is 15 years older than Diebler - there was no mysterious elite coach hiding in his bag of tricks. It's also hard to say if bringing in a ringer would work out for all parties because that's quite literally never happened in Columbus. John Calipari? Proven winner, pushing 70, almost no chance of creating a sustainable shift in what should be expected in Columbus in between football seasons.
The leader of the program gets an atrocious home court and an athletic department carrying perpetually unattractive priorities, namely funding every conceivable sport as well as one state-sponsored religion. There's no IU football parallel to be found in Columbus - Indiana decided to finally get serious about the most lucrative college sport, and it isn't basketball.
Most of our list from two years ago has aged poorly. As for Diebler, whose two Januarys have been merely mediocre (so, meteorically superior to Holtmann's) he's still in his thirties and learning in the long shadow cast by peak Matta who is now extending the decline which forced him out of Columbus back at Butler.
His teams - just two of them; a small sample - consistently lack the depth, in-game coaching strategy and gravitas to close out competitive games, which is what made last night's demolition of no.24 Wisconsin a pleasant surprise. They need to scrape together a few of these to match the dead cat bounce following Holtmann's exit - and to start believing this could be who they are and will become.
If you're disciplined enough to get past maddening questions like How Many Times Does Ohio State Have to Hire Dave Dickerson Before Learning That Lesson, you can see benefits of being patient with Diebler's development journey. This isn't Day finally realizing he cannot be head coach, OC, QB coach and lead recruiter all at the same time. Diebler is on an accelerated timeframe with zero tailwinds.
David Lighty celebrates the 2011 B1G Championship in 2011. © NEAL C. LAURON / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
It comes down to accepting what success with the men's basketball program should be. Football is expected to win every game, and when in-game coaching does things like telegraph the snap count for every possession before allowing Jayden Fielding to participate in material fashion, it's a crisis of confidence. This should not translate to basketball. That's not fair or productive at all.
Our highly-refined football amygdalas are hijacking reasonable basketball expectations. History suggests success is finishing in the top third of (a now) 18-program Big Ten while winning an NCAA tournament game, which the program has done 11 times since Matta's arrive 22 years ago and just 18 times since the tournament expanded to 65 teams in 1987.
Translated: Even with the best 12-year stretch in program history in the dataset, Ohio State men's basketball has still been unsuccessful more often than not. Shoring up the program's floor and raising the success standard from merely participating in March to surviving into April should take precedent over hasty moonshot attempts at hanging a banner in an arena no one enjoys going to.
The football program did this back when it decided to go youthful and build a sustainable foundation, betting on a 37-year old coach who just five years earlier was leading Denison to a 2-6 record.
That guy was born on Valentine's Day and it took him a few years to settle in. Ohio State's basketball coach took over for his fired boss that day, and he deserves the grace to settle in and solve a puzzle which has been consistently scrambled since its inception.
