This Ohio State men’s basketball season has turned into a train wreck, and per reports, the school feels its been bad enough to fire its coach midseason.
College basketball insider Jeff Goodman, Ohio State has fired Chris Holtmann. Multiple outlets have since confirmed.
This season has quickly turned into a nightmare for OSU men’s basketball.
Everything started well, with Ohio State winning 12 of its first 14 games. Since then, OSU’s lost nine of 11, the most recent one being a 62-54 setback at Wisconsin Tuesday night. Holtmann’s time at Ohio State has ended in the middle of his seventh season.
His overall record was 137-85 and his Big Ten mark was 67-64.
Holtmann’s teams made it to the NCAA Tournament in four of his first five seasons and would have probably been a good bet to make it in 2020 if not for COVID-19 taking over the world.
Against Penn State, Holtmann went 9-5. Three of those losses came in Holtmann’s first season, when Penn State swept Ohio State in the regular season and won again in the Big Ten tournament.
The team’s split there regular-season meetings this year.
Penn State came back from an 18-point second half deficit to win at home in December.
Ohio State evened the score in Columbus the next month.
Before Ohio State, Holtmann was the head coach at Butler, where the program made it to the NCAA Tournament in each of his three seasons, advancing as far as the Sweet 16 in his last year. Despite putting together a consistent winner at Ohio State, Holtmann and co. never made it past the Round of 32. At 52, Holtmann probably isn’t done coaching, and he has a solid resume overall. So we’ll see what happens.
