Ohio State's Jake Diebler steps into interim coach role as family offers support
The sun had set low enough across the farmland that butts up against the western side of Upper Sandusky’s athletic complex. The pregame festivities of this Friday night’s home football game against Bucyrus had wrapped, and three of the day’s featured attendees were plotting a course to the one room where they most felt at home.
On this late September day in 2022, Keith Diebler and two of his sons, Jake and Jon, were headed to the gymnasium. All three were back in town for one night only, a chance for dad to present his sons their plaques as they were inducted into their alma mater’s athletics hall of fame. In his lone season with the Rams, Jake Diebler was Ohio’s co-Division II player of the year while teaming with his sophomore brother, Jon, to bring home a state championship while playing for their dad.
The reception to their return was full of warmth. Making their way off the field and onto the track, it was difficult to make it more than a few feet without someone stopping them to share a story, exchange a hug or ask for a selfie. The accomplishments on the plaques were worthy of celebration, but that wasn’t the primary feeling Jake Diebler said he took with him that evening.
“We were taught and held accountable to live life a certain way and to treat people a certain way,” he told The Dispatch, standing at the south end of the stadium. “The basketball stuff was always secondary in our house, and I know that’s probably hard to believe because I felt like we ate more dinners in the gym than maybe we did at home, but that was always something my mom and dad instilled in us at a very early age: basketball is a team sport.
“There’s a way and an expectation to treat people and always try and leave something better than it was when you got there. There was pressure to carry that.”
Now a year and a half later, those words explain the situation Diebler and the Ohio State men’s basketball program now find themselves in. Wednesday morning, athletic director Gene Smith abruptly fired men’s basketball coach Chris Holtmann with six games remaining in his seventh year at the helm. Although the move had been in the works at an administrative level for several days, it caught the coaching staff unawares.
For an interim replacement, Smith turned to Holtmann’s top assistant: Jake Diebler, his associate head coach and the longest-tenured member of the staff. It would mean his first real run as a head coach, but it also entailed replacing the man who had brought him back to Ohio State in 2019. Someone Keith Diebler described as another member of their family.
The thought was numbing, the elder Diebler said. Then he echoed the words Jake Diebler had said as Upper Sandusky’s band marched on the field nearby.
“He’s been brought up that when it’s time to step up to the plate, you step up to the plate regardless of what you’re surrounded with and what’s happening,” Keith Diebler said Thursday afternoon. “I know he feels for Chris and I know he also feels responsibility to the student-athletes. They’ve got to be put to the forefront right now and I know that he will step up to the plate and give it everything he’s got because that’s the way he is.
“I think that’s the way he’s living it. Keep things rolling for Ohio State and move forward.”
So while it’s true that the goal for Jake Diebler has long been to be a head college basketball coach, this was not the way he had hoped to ascend to the position. He has been contacted by multiple mid-major schools with job openings only to turn them down in large part due to a desire to help Ohio State win at a high level and bring home some kind of hardware.
That has not happened, nor is it likely to take place this year. At 14-11 overall and 4-10 in the Big Ten, the Buckeyes would need to win out and make a Big Ten Tournament run to play themselves into the NCAA Tournament bubble conversation. Although it’s now technically Diebler’s team, there are limits to how much he can realistically hope to change at this point in the season.
Aside from tweaks to the game plans, Jon Diebler, now the director of recruiting at Butler, said his brother will do a good job of focusing his players on what they’re playing for.
“It’s hard to implement a whole new thing of what you want to do, but galvanize the troops,” he said. “Go out and play hard. Play for that Ohio State jersey. I think Jake will have those guys do that as best he can, and go out and play.”
The meaning of playing for Ohio State is not lost on the family. Jon smashed the program’s record books for 3-point shooting during a four-year career from 2007-11 and Jake was the program’s video coordinator from 2014-16 before joining the full-time coaching staff in 2019 after three years on staff at Vanderbilt.
“For Jake to be from the state, the family that we have there, he genuinely loves that place,” Jon Diebler said. “My family loves that place. I love that place. It means a lot to us. It’s been a huge part of our life.”
In a career that has spanned nearly 40 years, Keith Diebler has won more than 300 career games and is coaching both boys’ basketball and girls’ volleyball at Lakeside-Marblehead Danbury. Although he’s flirted with the idea of retirement and briefly stepped away so that he could watch his youngest son’s senior season at Ohio State, Keith Diebler is still working the sidelines this season.
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Sunday will be a change, though.
“I’m definitely going to be there (at Ohio State),” he said. “I have my assistant coach filling in for my district meeting Sunday so I can be there, because I’m committed to being there. I just think he’ll do OK and give 100% and that’s all you can ask.”
Jon Diebler had two promises about what that will look like.
“To be able to represent Ohio State, I know he’s going to soak it in and enjoy it but he’s going to do what he does with everything: he’s going to bust his butt and work hard,” he said. “That’s how he was raised. That’s who he is. He works hard. He plays hard. He plays with an edge. He coaches with an edge. That’s Jake.”
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Jake Diebler will 'keep things rolling for Ohio State,' dad says
