Pivotal offseason questions now await Jake Diebler, Ohio State after Georgia loss
The season wasn’t even 45 minutes done and the focus was already turning to next season.
In this era of college basketball, that’s how season-ending games go, particularly ones for teams like Ohio State. On March 18, one day after the NCAA Tournament field was finalized, the transfer portal officially opened. For the Buckeyes, though, there was a first-round NIT game against Cornell scheduled for March 19, giving them an opportunity to chase a trophy in a season unlike any other in recent memory.
Ohio State won that game, as well as Saturday’s second-round date with Virginia Tech, setting up a quarterfinal game against Georgia on March 26. Each step of the way, the Buckeyes kicked the proverbial can down the road, leaving decisions about the future to be dealt with at some undetermined date on the horizon.
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Now, with a 79-77 loss to the Bulldogs, that time has arrived. Of Ohio State’s 13 scholarship players, 11 have the ability to return next season and join an incoming two-man freshman class. Fifth-year seniors Jamison Battle and Dale Bonner are the only two players listed on Tuesday night’s roster who have exhausted their eligibility. Everyone else, from fourth-year senior Zed Key to a four-man freshman class, could technically suit up for the Buckeyes in 2024-25.
Decision time for Ohio State
Decision time has arrived as Ohio State enters its first offseason with Jake Diebler as the full-time coach. When Diebler was associate head coach and lead recruiter under coach Chris Holtmann, every player joined the Buckeyes in part due to his efforts. In his introductory press conference announcing Diebler as the head coach, incoming Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork said Diebler’s ties not only to future recruiting classes in Ohio but his bonds with the current players were factors that helped solidify him as the man for the job.
Looking into the offseason after its abrupt arrival, Diebler said roster retention will be critical for the Buckeyes as they try to build on the lessons learned this season.
“I don’t know that I can get into specifics on that, but retention is critical,” he said. “Roster management, it’s a completely different landscape right now. For us, retention’s going to be important.”
The construction of this team was in large part the product of a multiyear process hatched by retiring athletic director Gene Smith and Holtmann, the coach he ultimately fired as the losses piled up and negativity around the program grew. Ohio State opted to build its roster through youth, recruiting and signing consecutive top-10 recruiting classes in 2022 and 2023, and that inexperience took its lumps in an era where the extra year of eligibility afforded to all players who played during the COVID-19 pandemic meant rosters are older than ever.
So much of this year’s success, and the hope for future gains, has particularly rested on the shoulders of three sophomores: Roddy Gayle, Felix Okpara and Bruce Thornton. All three played important roles as freshmen and significant roles as sophomores, with Thornton serving as a captain in both seasons and a player who has played in and started all but one game during the last two years.
Not guarantee
There’s been a major investment into those players, and all three of them have close relationships with Diebler.
“Those three have poured their heart and soul into this program,” the coach said. “All of them have really embraced the way we’ve wanted to play, the changes we made. They played well in their own way and they’re growing. I’m proud of them for that and proud of them, those three are a critical part of the leadership of us finishing the way we have.”
In this era, that does not guarantee anything for the future. All will be prized players should they opt to enter the transfer portal, and each has no doubt heard plenty of overtures from other programs the moment Holtmann was fired and the direction of the program was in doubt.
After the loss to Georgia, Battle and Bonner were the two players brought to the postgame press conference. Both are multi-time transfers: Bonner went from Division II school Fairmont State to Baylor to Ohio State, while Battle went from George Washington to Minnesota to Ohio State.
“In the end, they’ve got to do what’s best for themselves,” Battle said when asked what advice he’d give players on the roster who would be considering transferring. “Just staying tight with those people who you trust and staying tight with your circle, whether it’s family, whether it’s friends, there’s so many different people that want the best for you and in the end, you can lean on them.”
Said Bonner: “Everyone’s got a decision to make and you’ve got to do what’s best for you at the end of the day. You have a good circle around you, people you trust, things of that nature.”
When he transferred from Minnesota to Ohio State, the Robbinsdale, Minnesota, native said he heard plenty of criticism from people in his hometown but that he knew he was making the right decision.
“It was the decision I had to make,” he said. “I got a lot of flack for it but in the end I know I made the right decision because of the guys I’m with and the season I had and the team we had, the collective we had. You’ve got to do what’s best for yourself, whether it’s going to (tick) people off or make people mad.”
Some of those conversations about next steps undoubtedly have already taken place. THE Foundation, the primary Ohio State collective that supports the men’s basketball program with name, image and likeness opportunities, has been public with its promises that it has raised plenty of funds to assist with roster retention and to help the Buckeyes be active in the portal. In his postgame comments, Diebler thanked them specifically for their efforts.
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Diebler, too, has decisions to make about his coaching staff. The Buckeyes had to patch together their coaching staff in the final weeks as he was elevated to interim coach and, on the eve of playing in the NIT, assistant coach Jack Owens left to join Holtmann at Butler.
He has hired one full-time assistant in Dave Dickerson, a veteran who has been the head coach at Tulane and most recently USC Upstate and spent seven years on Thad Matta’s staff at Ohio State from 2010-17. Other staffing decisions are expected soon as players make decisions and names continue to enter the portal.
“He’s achieved the things that we’re striving to achieve as a program,” Diebler said of Dickerson. “I think it’s valuable to have that around. He’s someone I trust to tell me the truth. His experience as a head coach was really important to me. He’s very valuable to this staff and this program. That was an easy thing for me to identify early on and I’m excited to have him as a part of our team.”
The question now is who will be on that team. The season has ended, but the work is just beginning.
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Pivotal offseason questions now await Ohio State after Georgia loss
