Ohio State basketball needed a breakthrough, and instead it created program questions with an NCAA Tournament flameout: Doug Lesmerises

COLUMBUS, OHIO — It wasn’t a completely shocking loss for the Ohio State basketball team, but it was an awful loss for the Ohio State basketball program. A bracket that appeared open for the first fun Buckeyes NCAA Tournament run in eight years collapsed on itself Friday. With a 75-72 overtime loss to No. 15 seed Oral Roberts in Ohio State’s first tournament game, fourth-year coach Chris Holtmann punted any benefit of the doubt and created a show-me season for 2021-22.

This isn’t good enough. The Ohio State basketball standard is higher. After suffering one of the 10 worst upset losses by seed in NCAA Tournament history (the Buckeyes were the ninth No. 2 seed to lose to a No. 15, and a No. 1 has lost to a No. 16 once), Holtmann has a touchstone for his most disappointing day as Ohio State’s head coach. Time for a peak to match it.

As for this OSU team, it was beautiful on offense when it played together and always flawed on defense. Holtmann said improving the defense is the top priority for next year. He prides himself on coaching good defense. This wasn’t that. Offensively, the Buckeyes played tight and missed foul shots, and though Holtmann can’t go to the line and shoot, he can create an atmosphere and inspire some of the confidence that his players take there. Shooting 76 percent from the line for the season and 50 percent from the line for the most important game is what? Luck? Or something more?

Even if you chalk up the foul shooting to fate, Holtmann admitted to other things that should have been within his control. Ohio State sent the wrong Zoom link to reporters for the postgame news conference (that wasn’t on him), so the Buckeyes were forced to set up a makeup video conference after the team left Mackey Arena. Holtmann sat on the team bus and as the Buckeyes drove away answered questions about what he did wrong.

First, they were flat.

“I did not feel like we were as quick to loose balls as we needed to be early,” Holtmann said. “I’ll put that on me. I did not think that we had the necessary juice there early.”

Second, after making his first four shots, Duane Washington finished the game going 3 of 17 from the field. Washington trying to do too much has always lurked under the OSU season, and Holtmann knew it, and in the biggest game of the year Holtmann couldn’t help his most aggressive offensive player settle down.

“Maybe he was pressing a little bit,” Holtmann said, acknowledging this was the first real taste of NCAA pressure for most players on the court Friday, save for C.J. Walker and Musa Jallow. “Maybe there’s some things I could have done better to kind of relax him, because I thought he he played uncharacteristically maybe a little too wound up.”

And the blown leads that kept popping up in the last weeks of the regular season now seem like a precursor for a team prone to lulls. Holtmann got tired of questions about that a couple weeks ago and chalked it up to basketball being a game of runs. Then his 15-point favorite game up a 17-3 run in the middle of the first half right when a No. 2 seed should have began exerting its influence.

Flat team? Over-excited offensive star? Lulls? Completely typical in an NCAA opener. And a coach has to coach that away.

So the program is the focus, not the team. Washington and E.J. Liddell are great offensive players and this team at its best had guys who knew how to fill roles. Friday, Oral Roberts left the role players open and they missed. Liddell was 10 of 15 (67 percent). Washington was 7 of 21 (33 percent). Everyone else was 12 of 31 (39 percent). There’s no obvious NBA player on this team, and the Buckeyes lack size, which showed up against the big bangers in the Big Ten. The talent isn’t elite across the board.

So in some ways, this team overachieved with its regular season. But the program is underachieving.

Four years in, this is Holtmann’s program. And it’s not good enough. This team needs a breakthrough. The only one so far was the second-place finish in the Big Ten his first year, when the 15-3 conference record with an imperfect team showed just what Holtmann could do as an X’s and O’s coach and a motivator. But the Buckeyes are 31-29 in regular-season Big Ten play the last three seasons, and in three NCAA Tournament appearances, Holtmann’s Buckeyes have never won two games and are 2-3 overall.

Last year was tough for everyone, the canceled tournament now a what-if that every coach with a decent team can point to. Holtmann thought he had a Sweet Sixteen team.

But the unfortunate reality is that Holtmann lacks the run early in his OSU career that his predecessors managed to accomplish.

• Randy Ayers: Reached the Sweet Sixteen in his second season in 1991 and the Elite Eight in his third season in 1992.

• Jim O’Brien: Reached the Final Four in his second season in 1999.

• Thad Matta: Reached the National Championship Game in his third season in 2007.

NCAA Tournament success isn’t the only thing that defines a coach. But it’s a big thing. The last three OSU coaches earned the benefit of the doubt early with that. Holtmann is instead, after Friday, losing his.

“I think, obviously, that’s the next step for us,” Holtmann said. “There’s no question (that it) is finding a way to get to the second weekend.”

He then pointed out that the Buckeyes lost to better seeds in years past. In 2018, as a 5 seed they beat a 12 and lost to a 4. In 2019, as an 11 seed they beat a 6 seed and lost to a 3. But Holtmann knows that if you’re pointing out that time you won one game as an 11 seed as a tournament shining moment, the sun hasn’t come out enough in March

“That doesn’t discount the fact that I understand we need to,” Holtmann said of more tourney success. “That’s where we need to be moving forward. We certainly thought we had a great chance last year, we certainly thought we had a great chance this year. We didn’t get it done this year.”

To end, I will return to the most important conversation I’ve had about Ohio State basketball in the 16 seasons I’ve been around it, and one I continually reference. On the day Holtmann was hired in June 2017, I talked with athletic director Gene Smith at length about how good Ohio State basketball is supposed to be.

“We should be a top 15 program all the time. Periodically top five. That’s my expectation,” Smith said.

I told Smith that was ambitious.

“That’s exactly right,” Smith said. ‘”That’s what I feel is capable.”

That means this season is, at best, what the Buckeyes should be all the time. They were briefly in the top five in the AP rankings this season, but they finished 12-8 and in fifth place in the conference and were booted in the NCAA Tournament opener. Yes, the Big Ten is the toughest conference around and was especially difficult this year. But the expectation is that the Buckeyes compete at the top of that group.

That’s why I keep talking about a breakthrough. Considering that the Buckeyes have never made the Sweet Sixteen with Holtmann, it’s hard to argue they have been top 15 all the time. They have been pretty good. But there’s no debate that the periodically in the top five hasn’t been there.

This had a chance to be that. Check on how many of your friends had the Buckeyes making the Elite Eight or the Final Four in their brackets. That’s why this hurts the program. If you’re supposed to be in the top five every now and then, you wind up waiting on the then.

It wasn’t this season. Now it feels like it really needs to be next season.

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