What's on Chris Holtmann's wish list for Ohio State basketball in the new year?
The start of the preseason brought the return of a phrase not used by Chris Holtmann in several years.
It was four years earlier, on a team expecting contributions from multiple highly rated freshmen, that the Ohio State coach described his task of “normalizing struggle” to be paramount while trying to guide E.J. Liddell, D.J. Carton and Alonzo Gaffney through the 2019-20 season. The postseason was wiped out by the COVID-19 pandemic, Liddell grew into a two-time all-Big Ten player and Carton and Gaffney ultimately transferred.
In other words, the results were a bit of a mixed bag. But this year, looking over a roster with 10 total new faces including two walk-ons, Holtmann again revisited the phrase while making plans for his 2022-23 team that would feature four of those freshmen in significant roles. It’s with that roster that Ohio State has climbed into the Associated Press top 25, fallen back out, battled Duke at Cameron Indoor Stadium, taken a difficult overtime loss to North Carolina at Madison Square Garden and made the program’s first trip to the Maui Invitational in nearly 20 years.
With all that as a backdrop, Holtmann has a pretty good idea of what this team is. He knows what can and can’t realistically be changed, but this time of year that doesn’t stop many from making resolutions for improvement in the new year.
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Here’s a look at what is likely on Holtmann’s wish list for the Buckeyes as they simultaneously flip the calendar to 2023 and open Big Ten play at Northwestern.
More defensive bite
There is more positional versatility on this Ohio State roster than in recent years, and the hope has been that a greater ability to switch multiple positions would lead to a significant turnaround for a team that finished 111th nationally in adjusted defensive efficiency according to KenPom.com. That wasn’t just the lowest ranking for the Buckeyes during Holtmann’s five seasons, but it was the worst for the program since finishing 243rd in 2003-04, Jim O’Brien’s final season.
So far, the results have been mixed. After allowing 99.3 points per 100 possessions last season, Ohio State has dropped that to 97.0, but that figure still ranks No. 78 nationally and fourth-worst in the Big Ten. Ohio State has held nine of its first 12 opponents below their season averages for offensive efficiency, but three of the six high-major teams on the schedule so far have exceeded their season averages.
The Buckeyes don’t turn opponents over and have the second-fewest steals in the Big Ten. Those numbers might not improve much, but Ohio State can improve its defense across the board.
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“The biggest concerns are really our transition defense, our rebounding, and can our defense with some of the guys individually and collectively improve, because we have struggled to get stops when we’ve needed to get stops consistently and that’s where we’ve got to get better,” Holtmann said after beating Alabama A&M on Dec. 29.
No season-altering injuries
This is true for every coach in every sport for every season, but the Buckeyes have been particularly snakebitten by injuries that have significantly altered the trajectory of multiple recent seasons. Many of them unfortunately were tied to five-year all-around contributor Kyle Young, who battled leg injuries, concussions and an appendectomy while also logging 135 games from 2017-22.
His appendectomy and recovery directly lined up with a four-game losing streak during the 2019-20 season. His concussion, coupled with Justice Sueing’s limited effectiveness due to a groin injury that would cost him all but two games of the next season, were significant factors in the first-round NCAA Tournament upset loss to Oral Roberts. And as Ohio State closed the 2021-22 regular season with losses in three of its last four games, injuries to Zed Key, Gene Brown III and, again, Young, all played roles.
This year is a different story. Ohio State defeated Alabama A&M on Thursday with a fully healthy roster for the first time all season, and it now gives Holtmann the welcome challenge of figuring out how to tighten up his rotations instead of stretching out guys who might not be ready for bigger roles.
Sometimes the best ability is availability, and right now Ohio State has plenty of the latter at least.
Continued growth from new faces
In assembling this roster, there has been a steadfast belief that the best basketball for the 2022-23 Buckeyes would lie in the winter months. Freshmen come with learning curves, and a team with four of them in the primary rotation figured to experience plenty of growing pains through the opening weeks of the season.
It doesn’t stop there for this Ohio State team, though. Although Tanner Holden has three years under his belt at Wright State, Holtmann has likened his progression to a first-year player as well while he adapts to the high-major level.
“I’ve always sensed that guys in his position … you really see them come on, the back half of that first year, kind of like a freshman,” the coach said during the preseason.
There’s always the concern about freshmen hitting the proverbial wall, but so far Roddy Gayle, Felix Okpara, Brice Sensabaugh and Bruce Thornton have all showed flashes of what made them top-65 prospects in the 247Sports.com rankings. If they continue to progress, the chance to have a memorable March grows significantly.
No lengthy losing streaks
Each of the last four seasons has been mired by a downturn at some point. In 2018-19, Ohio State lost five straight and six of seven in January. The following year, it was a stretch of six losses in seven games starting in late December stretching into late January. More recently, the streaks have come at the end of seasons: a four-game skid to close the 2020-21 regular season and a 1-3 record in the final four regular-season games last season when a path to a share of a Big Ten title was on the table.
This year’s team seems to have more bodies capable of contributing on a given night and is less reliant on just one or two players to handle the heavy lifting, which could make it better equipped to handle a key injury or off night for a go-to player. Doing so would go a long way toward helping Ohio State’s seeding come March Madness and create a more navigable path to the second weekend.
A sophomore season for Brice Sensabaugh
There’s still the matter of 19 Big Ten games to help dictate what might happen, but through his first 12 games Sensabaugh had played well enough to be discussed as the second one-and-done player to come through Columbus. An under-the-radar recruit when he signed with Ohio State, Sensabaugh was named Florida’s Mr. Basketball, climbed nearly 200 spots in the recruiting rankings in the process and wasted little time making an impact upon his arrival on campus.
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He's on track to be the first freshman to lead the Buckeyes in scoring since D’Angelo Russell in 2014-15, and that natural scoring ability has already propelled Sensabaugh onto NBA mock drafts as potential late-first-round selection. While going from unranked as recently as June 2021 to being taken in the first round of the draft two years later would be an unquestioned success story, there would almost certainly be some bitter with the sweet for Holtmann after losing another projected multi-year player quicker than anticipated.
Last season, Malaki Branham went from an NBA afterthought as Big Ten play started to the No. 20 pick as Ohio State’s first one-and-done since Russell. If history repeats itself with Sensabaugh, it will be another feather in the cap for Ohio State’s player development under Holtmann but also a possible wonder of what could have been had either or both players remained with the Buckeyes for at least two years.
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: What does Chris Holtmann's NYE wish list look like for Ohio State?
