It is halftime and the members of the Ohio State basketball team are assembled on a collection of blue chairs, stuffed inside a small space off of the visiting locker room. The Buckeyes have been talking among themselves for a few minutes, mixing in suggestions with encouragement on how to right the 15-point deficit they face against Penn State, when team nutritionist Michelle Sweeney walks in. She asks if her players are thirsty. A few grumble responses and Sweeney goes out into the hallway, returning with a few bottles of water. She tosses the bottles to those who silently raise their hands, and asks if anyone is hungry or needs anything else. No one answers. “Well, you guys have no energy. You need to get your shit together,’’ Sweeney says as she storms out of the room.
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The players sit silent for a half-second before someone says, “Damn, man. She never says anything!” Soon everyone is voicing their agreement, as if Sweeney’s outburst is the kick in the rear end the Buckeyes need to play better. A few minutes later, Chris Holtmann comes in. The head coach is, interestingly, less fiery than his nutritionist and far more upbeat than expected. He talks about toughness and effort, promising he will coach better and encouraging them to play better. Three times he yells, “We gotta ratchet it up!” before calling his team together for a quick huddle. Buoyant and energetic, the players fly out the door for the second half. Five minutes into the second half, Ohio State trails Penn State by 20. The Buckeyes would lose by 14.
Holtmann requests privacy for his postgame conversation, a talk that stretches beyond 20 minutes. Neither he nor his players care to divulge exactly what was said, but they do share that both coaches and players spoke, offering varying opinions, ideas, frustrations and solutions. “We have to kind of just figure it out,’’ Holtmann says.
Ohio State is not alone. If anything, the Buckeyes are a microcosm of college basketball this season. A month ago, after a 9-0 start that included wins over Cincinnati, Villanova, Purdue, North Carolina and Penn State, the Buckeyes were ranked No. 2 in the country. The loss to the Nittany Lions, a team they hammered by 32 points on Dec. 7, is their fifth in six games, and when the new AP poll is released on Monday they’re no longer ranked in the Top 25. Save San Diego State and one-loss Gonzaga, every team has suffered a similar case of the yips, creating arguably the most confounding season in recent memory.
Fated with such chaos, the differentiator isn’t who will avoid disaster. It’s who will survive it, and emerge on the other side. Ohio State would like to be one of those teams, but three days spent with the Buckeyes proved just how difficult that is to do.
Holtmann backs his black SUV up the driveway, pulling up just outside of the garage. Two dogs bark in the fenced-in backyard. The bigger one, Huck, is the bribery gift to 9-year-old daughter Nora, who was less than thrilled to leave the comforts of Butler University when Holtmann took the Ohio State job in June 2017. Nora sagely negotiated a puppy in exchange for relocation.
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The Holtmanns got lucky with the house. Hired late in the cycle after Thad Matta surprisingly was let go, the family needed a place fast, with football season and official visits bearing down on them. They not only found a freshly remodeled home, but also one with sellers who were downsizing and happy to leave some furniture behind. In a lot of ways, Holtmann’s career has been as charmed as his house hunting. After toiling in the assistant ranks, he got his first head-coaching job at Gardner Webb in 2010. Three seasons later he engineered a turnaround from 12 wins to 21. He left for an assistant’s spot at Butler, and after one season was elevated to interim head coach when Brandon Miller took a leave of absence for personal reasons, a leave that later became permanent.
Holtmann earned the respect of his peers and the full-time job from his boss, athletic director Barry Collier, as he deftly managed the delicate situation, leading the Bulldogs to the NCAA Tournament that year. He steered Butler through its jump from the Horizon League to the Big East, engineering two more NCAA runs, including a Sweet 16 berth in his final season. He wasn’t the first choice for Ohio State. Athletic director Gene Smith pursued Fred Hoiberg (then with the Bulls), Chris Mack (Xavier) and Greg McDermott (Creighton), but many believed Holtmann was the right hire. Known as a player’s coach who exhibits the even keel of his mentor, Brad Stevens, Holtmann was roundly praised. In his first season, he took a Buckeyes team picked by most for a bottom-tier finish to a 25-9 record and an NCAA berth. Reality smacked lightly last year, when a 12-1 start fizzled into a 7-13 finish, but the Buckeyes still got back to the tourney and upset sixth-seeded Iowa State in the first round.
Holtmann was as stunned as anyone at Ohio State’s early run this year. He intentionally built the schedule thinking his team — the youngest he has coached in his career — might benefit from a few early-season lumps. Instead, the whole thing, shall we say, backfired, the Buckeyes collecting wins over a host of brand-name teams. In hindsight, it’s easy to see what happened: Those blue bloods might have had the name, but they weren’t exactly clicking on all cylinders and the wins looked more impressive than they actually were. “You’re practicing and you’re 6-0, 7-0, and you’re trying to preach to them,’’ Holtmann says. “It’s not that they were tuning us out, but I think it all gave us a false sense of where we were.’’ The Buckeyes came back to the mean hard and fast, from averaging 79.1 points in their first two games to 63.5 over their next six, this skid feeling eerily reminiscent to last year’s.
Holtmann held fast, and although the players say all of the right things — “We have to go back analyze this game, learn from it and forget about it,’’ junior guard Duane Washington Jr. said after the loss to Penn State — do they believe it? Can the Buckeyes find their way out of the fog? That’s what Ohio State has to figure out, and it’s also what keeps Holtmann up at night.
He should have gone home. He knows it now, and frankly, he knew it then. A houseful of friends — lifelong buddies, who understand the torturous roller coaster of coaching — awaited him. They would not expect him to be happy. They’d be fine to just let him be. Instead after another gutting loss, Holtmann holed up in his office, studying the film from a game already decided until 3 in the morning, and then manically planning for an 8 a.m. practice. When he finally did return, to a wife who at least understood why he stayed, even if she didn’t agree, and some friends who neither understood nor agreed, Holtmann got a talking to. “We told him, ‘You can’t just do this by yourself,’ ’’ Holtmann’s wife, Lori, says. “Even though your tendency might be to be isolated, that’s not the healthiest for you. We’re your tribe at home, waiting on you, regardless of whether you win or lose.’’
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This isn’t a new message to Holtmann; it’s just one he has to work to remember. Since he took over at Butler, he has made a weekly visit to a therapist part of his routine. Miller’s sudden departure has never been fully explained — he has not spoken to anyone in the media since — but people have intimated it stemmed from his need for better mental health. That certainly impacted Holtmann, who was left to pick up the pieces, but at Lori’s suggestion, he sought counseling, not to fight off a ghost that haunted others. “More than anything it reminds me, ‘What am I doing? What’s my purpose?’ ” Holtmann says. “Why did I do this in the first place? A lot of time, that gets lost.’’
Holtmann, 48, is sitting on a gray sofa in his year-old office, part of a $34 million renovation and addition to the Schottenstein Center. His team practices in a facility lined with displays celebrating the program’s successes, including one section that features the team’s assortment of Nike shoes, a collection so extensive it looks like a FootLocker. He drives a Mercedes and collects a $3 million annual salary.
Coaching has become a grueling profession, a grinder that spits out the unsuccessful in rapid fire and occasionally runs out the successful in a slow burn. (Just last month, Washington coach Chris Petersen stunned the college football ranks when he elected to walk away at age 55.) Holtmann knows no one will pity him. He neither expects it nor wants it. He signed on for a job that includes a lot of glory but comes with a lot of demands. He gets it. Besides, the counseling isn’t about handling outside pressure.
No, this is from within. He is not a firebrand, not the type to scream off his tension in practice. In two days of prepping for Penn State, he opted for upbeat positivity, rather than wallpaper-withering criticism. He’s more of a thinker, the sort who will internalize things until he knots himself into middle-of-the-night wakeups and bouts of insomnia. Frequently he can be found in a separate room in his house, the clock reading 2:30 a.m. as he tinkers with a game plan or gnaws over what he could have done better. These last few weeks have, needless to say, been especially difficult. The practical side of Holtmann knows his team is neither as good as it looked in December nor as bad as it appears right now. Except the practical side can’t overtake the other part of his brain, the one that simply can’t stand losing.
Lori is grateful her husband has found an outlet. Married for 20 years, she long ago learned how he is wired. She knows he prefers to keep things inside, and she realizes that in part he wants to protect her and Nora from what’s eating him. She is proud of his willingness to share his feelings through counseling. Discussing mental health remains a stigma — Holtmann says he once ran into a veteran coach who, upon discussing chaos of their profession, jokingly said, “We should all see a damned shrink!” The remark was meant in jest. “There’s so much silent suffering going on, not just in college coaching but everywhere, and people need to be able to talk about it,’’ Lori says. “We all need someone to work through things with, and as much as I’d love to be that person for him, in this one I really can’t. I’m incredibly proud of him that he’s said, ‘This is how I cope.’ ’’
Holtmann has tried to get through to his team as it has lost five of its last six games.As he eases his car into a parking place at Lane Aviation on Friday afternoon, arriving for the Ohio State charter to State College, Pa., Holtmann talks briefly about culture. It’s become a lazy buzzword in college circles, the mythical solution to all problems, but he believes in it and has worked hard to cultivate it. In the summers, he invites his players to weekly Beyond Hoops sessions, gifting each with a notebook to jot down their impressions or thoughts, encouraging them to speak their minds with their teammates. He wants them to understand him and his expectations, and how he wants Ohio State basketball to be defined. Does it work? He hopes so, but if you crisscross the country you will find that every player on every team insists his team is a family. Every player on every team insists his team plays hard and plays together. There is saying it, though, and being it. Ohio State is caught somewhere in the great gulf in between.
The Buckeyes say all of the right things and yet … Holtmann suspended two players, Washington and sophomore guard Luther Muhammad, for the game against Nebraska, benching them for an unspecified violation of team rules. He explains he didn’t have to suspend them but would have felt hypocritical if he was preaching certain standards and then allowed his players to play because Ohio State was in dire need of a win.
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The Buckeyes say all of the right things and yet … while the practices before the Penn State game are spirited and energetic, they also track sloppy enough that Holtmann sends the team to the baseline for sprints, reminding them, “This isn’t rec league ball. This is big-boy ball now.”
The Buckeyes say all of the right things and yet … the Penn State game.
There is no sign of what’s to come. Friday’s practice is decidedly more upbeat and energetic than Thursday’s. Muhammad, who along with Washington will play against the Nittany Lions, is especially effusive, screaming in guttural joy when things go well. Junior center Kaleb Wesson, among the older leaders Holtmann has urged to do better, calls out Washington for lack of effort. “Man, you gotta take a charge there!” Afterward, he explains that he feels it’s his duty to bring a level of accountability, that upperclassmen did that for him when he was a freshman and now it’s his turn.
As practice ends, the players exchange hugs in their handshake line and happily head to the locker room. They grab a quick stir fry meal, before busing to the airplane hangar and boarding their plane for State College. Wheels up at 5 p.m., right on schedule. Even better, it’s the “cookie plane.” Along with baskets of snacks, flight attendants dole out warm chocolate chip cookies with milk chasers to everyone on board. Life is good.
Everyone is on time for the 8:15 breakfast the next morning, bright-eyed and attentive during film. At 10:15, the bus pulls onto a show-covered Beaver Avenue, shepherding Ohio State to the Bryce Jordan Center. Despite the weather, Penn State is expecting a big crowd, including 7,000 students. Some of them enjoy heckling the Buckeyes as they warm up. “Do you even know what you’re in for?” a student yells. The players smile, turn away and stretch.
After Holtmann meets with the ESPN broadcasting crew, I ask him one last question. He’s inside the small coaches’ locker room, leaning against a doorframe, still wearing a down vest over his button-down shirt. “Do you know what to expect?” I ask him.
Holtmann shrugs. He knows how important this game is, especially in the overcrowded Big Ten, but he’s also mindful of not putting too much pressure into any one game. Despite their foibles, the numbers still are very much in Ohio State’s favor. The Buckeyes rank 13th in KenPom.com and 19th in the NET, and they are in a league that is projected to get at least 10 bids to the tournament. There are also 13 games remaining after Penn State, plenty of time to fix what ails them.
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He says he hopes he has done all he can, armed his players with enough information, but aside from in-game adjustments, which, he says, are slightly overrated, it’s out of his hands now. “I’ll know within the first five minutes or so of the game,’’ he says. At the five-minute mark, Ohio State trails, 10-4. Five minutes later, it is 18-7.
Afterward, after the interviews and showers, the Buckeyes board the bus and roll out of the parking lot and into a snowstorm. Hours later, West Virginia will lose to Kansas State, Duke to Louisville, Butler to DePaul, Colorado to Arizona and Wichita State to Houston. Florida State, Villanova, Seton Hall, Illinois and Baylor will fight for their victories, and Oregon will need overtime to beat Washington. Kentucky will win only after its coach is ejected.
Ohio State, again, is just like everyone else this season. Which, of course, is the problem. The Buckeyes need to discover how to be different.
(Photos: Rich Barnes/USA Today)
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