Two years after Ohio State hired Jake Diebler and Michigan hired Dusty May, there’s no debating which coach and program have performed better.
While Diebler is still seeking his first NCAA Tournament win as a head coach, May and the Wolverines will play for a national championship on Monday night. The Wolverines are favored to beat UConn after a dominant run to the national championship game, in which Michigan has won all five of its NCAA Tournament games by at least 13 points, including a 91-73 win over fellow No. 1 seed Arizona in the Final Four semifinals.
| Stat | Diebler | May |
|---|---|---|
| Overall record | 46-31 | 63-13 |
| NCAA Tournament record | 0-1 | 7-1 |
| Furthest round reached | 1st | Final |
| Big ten record | 26-20 | 33-7 |
| Best big ten finish | 8th | 1st |
| All stats before Michigan/UConn title game | ||
Regardless of Monday night’s result, Michigan is now firmly established as one of the top programs in college basketball just two years into May’s tenure. Ohio State, on the other hand, has gone four years without an NCAA Tournament win and 13 years without making it to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament.
Ohio State’s struggles in recent years have led to repeated debates about what the standard of expectation for Buckeye basketball should be. Ohio State’s only national championship in program history came in 1960; the Buckeyes have made just three Final Fours in the last 58 years. Football always has been and always will be king in Columbus, and in an era where schools have to decide how to split revenue-sharing money between sports, Ohio State isn’t allocating as much money to basketball as the sport’s perennial powers.
Michigan’s dominance this season, however, pokes holes in most of the excuses used to justify Ohio State’s lack of recent success.
While Michigan had a more recent history than Ohio State of competing for national championships – it made the 2018 national championship game under John Beilein, while Ohio State hasn’t even made the Sweet 16 since 2013 – the Wolverines, like the Buckeyes, had missed back-to-back NCAA Tournaments when May took over. Yet May needed only one year to rebuild Michigan into a contender, winning the Big Ten Tournament and making the Sweet 16 in 2025, and is now on the precipice of cutting down the nets in year two.
May and the Wolverines did all of that on the heels of Michigan winning a football national championship three seasons ago, all the while Michigan continues to invest in competing with Ohio State and others for Big Ten and national championships in football.
Ohio State took a step forward in Diebler’s second season, finishing 12-8 in a conference that had six Sweet 16 teams and making its first NCAA Tournament in four years. But both Diebler and Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork have acknowledged that the Buckeyes’ expectations should be much higher than just making the dance. Bjork told Eleven Warriors in February that he expects Ohio State to make the NCAA Tournament every year and “make a long run.” At Ohio State’s preseason media day last year, Diebler pointed to the banners on the back wall of Ohio State’s practice gym – which highlight the Buckeyes’ Big Ten championships and Final Four appearances – and identified those as the standards “this program should be tracking towards.”
With the heights Ohio State’s northern rival has already achieved under May, nothing less than making a serious run at a Big Ten championship and/or winning multiple games in the NCAA Tournament should be considered a successful result in 2026-27.
Whether Ohio State can become a legitimate contender next season will depend in large part on what happens over the next few weeks after the transfer portal opens Tuesday. Exceptional transfer recruiting is the biggest reason why Michigan will play for a national championship on Monday, as all of the Wolverines’ top four scorers – Yaxel Lendeborg, Morez Johnson Jr., Aday Mara and Elliot Cadeau – transferred to Michigan last offseason. May’s first transfer class at Michigan included Nimari Burnett and Ohio State transfer Roddy Gayle Jr., who have also been key contributors for the Wolverines this season, along with a pair of All-Big Ten bigs last season in Vladislav Goldin and Danny Wolf.
All of those players have made a bigger impact at Michigan than anyone Diebler has landed out of the transfer portal in two years as Ohio State’s head coach. That has to change in a big way this year for the Buckeyes, who will return just two of their top seven scorers (John Mobley Jr. and Amare Bynum) from this past season.
Ohio State is expected to spend more money in the transfer portal this year than it did last year, and there should be no greater source of motivation for the Buckeyes and their boosters to put more resources into the program than watching their hated rival compete for a national championship. That was certainly the case for Ohio State football two years ago, which followed up Michigan’s national title with a championship run of its own after signing a transfer portal haul that included Caleb Downs, Will Howard, Quinshon Judkins, Seth McLaughlin, Will Kacmarek and Julian Sayin.
Realistically, it’s hard to envision that level of success from Ohio State men’s basketball next season. Even with the arrival of a top-10 overall recruit in Anthony Thompson, the Buckeyes would need to land at least three or four impact players in the transfer portal and have just about everything go right to go from losing in the first round of the NCAA Tournament to making the Final Four. Considering the strong possibility that Thompson could be a one-and-done, however, it would be a major disappointment – and quite possibly a firable offense for Diebler – if the Buckeyes don’t make an NCAA Tournament run.
Diebler and May were always going to be compared to each other from the moment both of them were hired at rival schools, especially since May was considered the top external candidate to replace Chris Holtmann before Bjork promoted Diebler from within. While it’s a bit of an oversimplification to say Ohio State chose Diebler over May, as May might have chosen to go to Michigan even if Ohio State had offered him its job, a Michigan win on Monday night would serve as the ultimate validation for everyone who thought the Buckeyes should have hired May two years ago.
Ohio State’s success will always be measured in part by how it performs in comparison to Michigan, and the Wolverines are one win away from making a national championship the only result that can get the Buckeyes back on even footing with their rivals, at least in the sport of men’s basketball. And that makes the pressure on Diebler as high as it’s ever been to get Ohio State closer to that goal if he’s going to convince his detractors that he’s the right man to lead the program.
