Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Blame basketball, not me. I just call 'em as I see 'em. If they hit threes in their home games people will wonder what Holtmann did to change things up.

I think you know better than this.

I lived through the Randy Ayers and Jim O'Brien era, so I know failures.

Both of them had failures to be sure but unlike Chris Holtmann they both also had successful seasons.

These two added with Chris Holtmann are why I've questioned hearing that Ohio State is a top 25 basketball program, even after Thad Matta lifted the program. Throw in Gary Williams and that takes us back to 1986 (not quite back to Medina's modern college basketball start of 1985).



That's five coaches with only Thad Matta consistently winning tournament games going back almost 40 years. That sounds more like a Top 30 or 35 program. Take out Matta and the mostly leftover mediocrity is more like Top 40 or 50.

Across 15 seasons of Ayers and O'Brien, Ohio State had three tournament runs lasting behind the first weekend - '91, '92, '99. In turn they had 6 total losing seasons (%40). A lot for a program expected to routinely compete for B1G titles.

Holtmann is without those extremes, saddling the middle more with 20 win seasons and nothing to show for it come the tournament. (It's the consistency of those 20 win seasons that might be fooling that last of Holtmann's supporters.) In that sense Holtmann's tenure is playing out like an extended version of Gary Williams' shorter time at Ohio State:

[img width=274.381 height=65]https://i.imgur.com/VCMZ3lo.png[/img]

See:
https://sports.yahoo.com/ap-poll-college-basketball-rankings-022230492.html

This is not some homer site and the rankings weren't rearranged to maximize clicks. This is an unbiased and objective list using a system going back to the 1948/49 season and they say Ohio State is #10.

You can quibble around the margins and argue that they aren't quite top-10 but the argument that they aren't top-25 is absurd. You can only get there by ignoring the good times. That is just as ridiculous as some homer focusing ONLY on the good times and trying to say that they are top-4.

I think the "gambler's fallacy" would be to compare to the best periods in program history. I'm not doing that and I went to great lengths to avoid that. I'm comparing to the ~40 years since tournament expansion and if you went back much further Holtmann would look even worse by comparison because you'd start getting back into Fred Taylor's glory days.

Are you watching tOSU/Northwestern? Ohio State has one if the worst teams in the B1G for the second consecutive season. That is inexcusable for a program with Ohio State's resources.

You wrote there's a 50/50 chance about the coach being as good or better. And there's no real rule on that. There's no magic rule that because things were one way that they'll fly back. 

And the second part was because the I went and looked at those 35 non-Holman years, and it's four pretty nice coaches who were pretty inconsistent. Holtmann is a few bland tournament wins from being right in that pack. Which is more to say, OSU has had a lot often good coaches. Several of whom polite 2-year stretches not dissimilar to this one.

And those got them fired, which is what will happen unless OSU's admin climbs up into its own backside. 

You wrote there's a 50/50 chance about the coach being as good or better. And there's no real rule on that. There's no magic rule that because things were one way that they'll fly back.

I'll quibble that I understand and agree with the "rule" although it's not a rule. 

College sports being based prestige / recruiting, which tells you what your "baseline" talent level should be, means that a program average has a lot to do with how recruits view your school and how likely you are to land a specific quality of player. And then you're measured based on what you do with those recruits. 

Almost by definition, if you're underperforming per that baseline, you're either recruiting poorly or coaching poorly, or both. And if you're overperforming that baseline, you're either recruiting excellently or coaching excellently, or both. (Medina would say that Holtmann is recruiting well but coaching poorly, I'd expect.)

I personally think that a heuristic (not a rule) for coaching performance is that if a coach is performing either above or below baseline, your next coach is more likely to regress to the mean. I.e. not even 50/50, but actually more likely that a coach that follows a good coach will be more likely to be worse, and that a coach who follows a bad coach is more likely to be better. 

You can still get a coach who defies that likelihood. Purdue did it in football when they canned Danny Hope only to replace him with a coach that's in the running for the program's worst-ever. 

But I think medina's point, which I agree with, is that if your coach is underperforming your program baseline, you shouldn't fear getting rid of him. If it were only 50/50 that the next coach would be better, I might argue that you might want to stick with a coach and wait it out to see it improve. But I think if you're underperforming the odds are better than 50/50 that the next coach will outperform Holtmann. 

My own point that I bring up is that if you have a coach who is outperforming program baseline (i.e. Joe Tiller at Purdue), you shouldn't be ready to try to push him out to find the coach who can take the team to "the next level", because based on recruiting the "next level" is more likely to be regression to the mean than even loftier success.

Radio Chatter: they were talking on Friday what if Holtman had won a specific 3 games?

What if his first year he beat Penn State? Then OSU would have had a share of the Big Ten Title, and a trophy in the case.
What if OSU beat Illinois in overtime for the Big Ten Tournament Championship? Another title and trophy in the case.
What if OSU beat Oral Roberts in the opening round of the NCAA tournament? Most likely they make it to the 2nd weekend, and a sweet 16 appearance.

If Holtman has those three accolades in his cabinet, he is given grace for these last two seasons. But since he doesn't, it looks like Bjork has his first termination to figure out here soon.
Hearing it put this way makes me wonder how close the line is between success and failure. 3 more wins over 6 years doesn't seem like that big of a deal, but in this case they end up being a huge deal.

How I am slicing it is results since 1985 which is how we’re defining "modern" college Basketball starting with the “expansion to a 64 team tournament for the 1985 season.”

The results: 22 NCAA Tournament appearances; 9 league titles; 8 S16s; 5 E8s; 3 F4

Those results aren’t comparatively Top 10. If, however, rolling back the years all the way to 1949 improves Ohio State’s standing to 10th, that tells me Ohio State’s "modern" era is a step or two down from its 1949-1985 run.

When I question Ohio State’s Top 25 standing, I’m slicing it in terms of modern college basketball, 1985 and on.

For the record, Ohio State ranks 24th all time with 31 tourney bids (first bid 1939). They rank 19th with 14 S16s and 7th with 10 FFs, 7 of which are before 1970.

A Top 10 program pre-1985? Top 25 or 30 since?

Either way, fire Chris Holtmann.

For the record, I'm not sitting here pointing to the AP ranking saying "TOP 10".  I actually agree that they aren't quite that.  However, looking at what you've listed, basically the worst stat for tOSU is 24th in NCAA appearances and even that is top-25.  

It is funny because Ohio State Basketball is so different from Ohio State football.  In football the Buckeyes are the absolute undisputed most consistently elite team bar none.  In Basketball, the history has been a lot more feast-or-famine.  You can see that by how Ohio State's relative ranking improves as you move deeper into the Tournament:

• 24th in appearances
• 19th in S16's
• 7th in F4's

The first five years of the Holtmann era were consistently decent but never all that good.  No league titles and no S16's but also no missed Tournaments.  I wasn't thrilled with that but at least I could see the argument for keeping him.  Now I don't even understand what the argument would be.