Chris Holtmann: We want to schedule tougher nonconference games at Value City Arena
The 2022-23 Ohio State men’s basketball nonconference matchups, while formidable, don’t bring a lot of buzz to Value City Arena.
The Buckeyes will face preseason top-20 teams Duke, North Carolina and San Diego State as well as two other high-major programs as their appearance in the Maui Invitational unfolds, but all five of those games will be played outside of Ohio State’s home arena. With a 20-game Big Ten slate also on the schedule, the Buckeyes filled out their six non-conference games with opponents all ranked sub-300 nationally according to KenPom.com: Robert Morris, Charleston Southern, Eastern Illinois, St. Francis (Pa.), Maine and Alabama A&M.
That’s not historically how coach Chris Holtmann has scheduled his non-conference games, and in an appearance on The Gene Smith Podcast, Holtmann said the coming years will see at least one more recognizable name on Ohio State’s home court.
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“We’re talking to a number of programs right now, from Gonzaga to Arizona to Tennessee,” Holtmann said. “I think there are a number of teams we’ve talked about doing a home-and-home with. We’ve also had conversations with Texas. I think those are some schools that we haven’t seen here recently that I think we would like to get here and do some type of home-and-home with and I’d anticipate us doing that sometime in the next couple of years with a program like that.”
Ohio State opened Holtmann’s second and third seasons with a home-and-home against Cincinnati. The Buckeyes won both games by identical scores of 64-56, first in Cincinnati on Nov. 7, 2018 and then in Columbus on Nov. 6, 2020.
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During Holtmann’s five seasons, the Buckeyes have also hosted Clemson and Duke as part of the ACC-Big Ten Challenge as well as Villanova as part of the Gavitt Games. This year’s game at Duke is a rematch of last year’s showdown between the two, while Ohio State will play North Carolina at Madison Square Garden as part of the CBS Sports Classic.
Ohio State has also attempted to participate in a neutral-site Thanksgiving-week tournament each year under Holtmann. The Buckeyes were part of the PK80 in Portland during his first season (three games), were scheduled to participate in the 2020 Battle 4 Atlantis until the pandemic prevented them from taking part and played in the Fort Myers Tip-Off (two games) last year. This year, Ohio State will play in the Maui Invitational. Next year, it will be part of the Emerald Coast Classic.
Those events, plus the ACC-Big Ten Challenge and Ohio State’s ongoing participation in the CBS Sports Classic, leaves Holtmann only a few games that are under his control to schedule.
“One of the things I try to do, and we’d like to do every year, is bring a marquee non-conference opponent to Columbus,” Holtmann said. “We weren’t able to do that this year for a variety of reasons. Some of that’s out of our control with the number of games that get scheduled for you, but it’s something we want to try to do. Those are just fun games you want to try to bring every year, if you can, to Columbus.”
Stay tuned.
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Gonzaga? Texas? Ohio State basketball seeks marquee noncon matchups
