Ohio State basketball: Chris Holtmann top 10 finalist for Coach of the Year

The Ohio State basketball coach is a top 10 finalist for the Naismith Coach of the Year after an outstanding 2020-21 season so far.

Chirs Holtmann has been a great coach no matter where he has been. He has won Coach of the Year in three different conferences. This year is one of his stronger years of coaching despite having lost three straight games recently. He has a chance to be nationally recognized this season.

Holtmann is a semifinalist for the Naismith Coach of the Year. He is among 10 semifinalists across the country, including the second candidate in his own conference. Juwann Howard, coach at Michigan, is also one of the 10 semifinalists for this award.

Based on the strength of the other candidates left, it seems highly unlikely that Holtmann will win this award. If he wouldn’t have lost these last three games in a row, he’d have more of a chance to win it. But this recent slide seems to put him out of the running to win.

However, I think he has a very slim chance to pull it out. If he can win this final game against Illinois on Saturday and then win the Big Ten Tournament, he has an outside shot to grab this award. I’m sure he would care more about how that scenario would put his team as a number one seed instead.

Winning the National Coach of the Year would be something nice for Holtmann to put on his resumé. It would be another thing to point to to show just how good of a coach he is and how lucky the Ohio State basketball program is to have him.

The first step at closing the gap to win this award is winning tomorrow. That will be the thing that Holtmann is most focused on.