Ohio State basketball: Keys to the Buckeyes’ breakthrough season
By Alec Hartman
The Ohio State Buckeyes have surprised everyone with their unprecedented success this season.
In case you misread the title, it’s not the Buckeyes’ football team that is up for praise. The Ohio State basketball team has risen from the depths and is once again bringing joy to Buckeye nation. Value City Arena is finally getting the love it deserves as the basketball squad has returned to producing quality play on the hardwood.
The Buckeyes have struggled through the last two seasons. This has resulted in being consecutively left out of the NCAA Tournament. In fact, last season saw the Bucks skip out on the postseason entirely after not participating in the NIT. The Buckeyes hadn’t missed the NCAA Tournament in two consecutive seasons since 2004.
That 2004 season was also the dawn of a new era for Buckeye basketball as it was former coach Thad Matta‘s first season. Matta immediately improved the team during his debut season. He led Ohio State to a first-place finish in the Big Ten and the second round of the NCAA Tournament in his second season.
Matta took an even larger step soon after by taking the Buckeyes all the way to the national championship in just his third season. He’d go on to make another Final Four appearance, the Sweet Sixteen in two consecutive seasons, and an Elite Eight.
However, the Buckeyes began to fall further away from the top in every season following that Elite Eight appearance in 2013.
Although Matta did struggle in the back end of his career, he should still be remembered as the most successful coach in school history. He had by far the most wins of any previous Buckeye basketball coach, with nearly 75% of his games won as well.
Matta shattered expectations when he first arrived on campus. However, he could not keep that sustained success.
The Buckeyes eventually opted to end the Matta era following another season of extremely underwhelming results. As expected, only the biggest names in coaching were being thrown around as candidates for Ohio State’s head coaching job. With a payroll and viewership like the Buckeyes, only the best was expected to suffice.
The search for a replacement for Matta ended when Ohio State found their match with former Butler head coach Chris Holtmann. Interestingly enough, Matta was a former coach and alum of Butler as well. Holtmann may not have been the most coveted name but he has been the right choice for the job.
Indeed, Holtmann quickly outperformed what was expected from him during his first season. The Buckeyes are off to one of their best starts in quite some time and it does not look like it will stop here. The sky is the limit as this team has been all-in since the beginning.