Ohio State basketball: 2022 make-or-break for Chris Holtmann

For the seventh straight season and the fifth under Chris Holtmann, the Ohio State basketball team is sitting at home during the Sweet 16. The Buckeyes would have faced TTUN had they been able to beat Villanova last Friday, but they weren’t able to do so.

The lack of success in the NCAA Tournament is getting tiresome. On his last radio show on Monday, Holtmann touted the fact that his team had made the NCAA Tournament every year and that they have won at least 20 games every year he’d been in Columbus.

Those are great stats. You know what isn’t? His record in the month of March. That record stands at 10-15. The Buckeyes simply haven’t won any games when it’s mattered. He has also mentioned that he’s only lost to higher seeds in the NCAA Tournament except for 2021.

That’s true. But you know what? Plenty of other teams beat teams that have a better seed than them in the NCAA Tournament. Saint Peters is playing in the Sweet 16 this year as a 15-seed. Other programs do it all the time, so why can’t you?

Also, the one time you did lose to a lower seed was probably the worst loss in Ohio State basketball history when the Buckeyes fell to 15th-seed Oral Roberts. That loss can’t get excused away. There were two NBA players on that roster and they still lost.

2022 is going to be a big year for Chris Holtmann. He has a top-5 recruiting class coming in. Yes, he loses a lot of players, and he might still lose Malaki Branham as well. Even so, this will be the most talented team in general that he will have had since he’s been in Columbus.

With those kinds of players come expectations. If he fails to reach the second round of the NCAA Tournament yet again, then I can’t see him returning to Ohio State in 2023.