If there’s one way to summarize a lost season for the Ohio State Buckeyes, it’s that there were no shortage of opportunities to get it right.
That made Wednesday’s likely men’s NCAA tournament–eliminating loss to the Iowa Hawkeyes something of a microcosm of the season, one that started in a blaze of glory with a 14-made-threes masterpiece against the Texas Longhorns and ended with a whimper on the first day of a mostly empty Big Ten tournament. The chances were plentiful, and the Buckeyes couldn’t take advantage.
The stakes were known: A win might not have locked in a berth to the Big Dance, but a loss almost assuredly removed the Buckeyes from the conversation. They had the good fortune of seeing an Iowa team that had won just twice since January, one whose only path to the NCAA tournament was a long shot run at five wins in five days. And Iowa left the door open often, failing to pull away despite leading for much of the second half. A defining stretch came midway through the second half, when Ohio State had five consecutive offensive possessions trailing 63–61 with a chance to tie or take the lead. The Buckeyes turned it over three times and forced two contested pull-up jumpers on the other two trips.
“We got the ball to some pretty good positions, but turnovers certainly [hurt],” Ohio State coach Jake Diebler said. “I think that’s been something we’ve been fighting to get better at really in some of these stretches is some of these empty possessions with turnovers.”
Ohio State was only in this predicament in the first place because of key slipup after key slipup throughout January and February. It no-showed a late February home game against a Northwestern Wildcats team coming off losses in six of seven and got bludgeoned by 21. That was one of a shocking five home losses in Big Ten play, a surefire recipe to not hear your name called on Selection Sunday. The Buckeyes led by 11 in the second half at Illinois Fighting Illini, blew an eight-point lead with six minutes to play against the Oregon Ducks and led by four with under 20 seconds to go against the Pittsburgh Panthers, and lost all three games. They won their share, too, including a massive comeback win at the Purdue Boilermakers, but Diebler and his staff will sit at home Selection Sunday ruing all the chances they let slip on their way to a middling campaign.
“We have lived at the margins this year a little too much,” Diebler said. “I think part of that is our youth and experience … I think, aside from a couple halves in the nonconference against a tough schedule we played and certainly for a portion of that Northwestern game, we played really tough and hard all season long. It’s just at times, toughness and playing hard isn’t quite enough. You’ve got to execute. Attention to detail becomes critical.”
The inexperience perhaps starts with his team (the Buckeyes have started a freshman and three sophomores for much of the season), but spreads all the way up to its head coach. Diebler was the surprise choice to succeed his former boss, Chris Holtmann, despite his lack of coaching experience. To the 38-year-old’s credit, Diebler did a nice job galvanizing the Buckeyes as interim coach a year ago and came with endorsements from many across the state as a rising star. But handing over a high-profile gig to an assistant with eight games of head coaching experience to his name who had been a part of two straight staffs that were fired raised plenty of eyebrows at the time and will be scrutinized even further now. A school known for sparing no expense and expecting championships in all its sports instead settled for the local guy who otherwise was a candidate for jobs like Pepperdine. It’s not useful to question how this roster might have fared with a more proven coach given one of Diebler’s big wins was retaining key pieces of this roster from the Holtmann years, but it’s hard to argue the Buckeyes failed to get the most out of their talent.
No team has ever gotten an at-large bid at just two games over .500, which is where the Buckeyes now sit. Cancel whatever Selection Show plans the Buckeyes may have had in Columbus; expect to see OSU in Fox’s new College Basketball Crown tournament in Las Vegas instead, a competitor to the NIT in its first year whose concept has been widely panned by most around the sport before it even unveils its first bracket. Who knows what the Buckeyes’ motivations might look like in such a tournament, but given the no-show with everything on the line Wednesday, it’s hard to imagine they’ll be fired up for it.
In retrospect, it’s amazing how clear the path looked for the Buckeyes heading into this week, despite losing four of six to close the regular season and landing at a middling 17–14 mark for the year. They were competing for one of the final spots in the dance with a North Carolina Tar Heels team with one Quad 1 win all season, a Texas squad that Ohio State beat and also sat at 17–14, and a pair of Mountain West squads in the Boise State Broncos and Colorado State Rams who each have multiple Quad 3 or 4 losses. A win over an Iowa team widely expected to fire its coach as soon as its season ends might have been all it took to go dancing … and the Buckeyes couldn’t even do that.
Maybe in a few years we’ll look back at this first-year flop as simply part of the learning curve for Diebler on the way to a long, successful tenure. But for now, it’s hard to feel confident that the Buckeyes’ big gamble on its unproven head man will pay off. And the early price for that dice roll? A third straight year sitting at home during one of the biggest events in sports.
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