Ohio State basketball: Defining expectations for next season

The Ohio State basketball team won’t be participating in tonight’s National Championship Game. In fact, they haven’t participated in any games for the last two weeks after getting bounced on the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament for the fifth straight year.

Ohio State has been in offseason mode since losing to Villanova. Now, they work towards next season and try to make their team the best that they can for 2022. They lost their two best players from this past season to the NBA but might get one of them back.

Where do the Buckeyes go from here? They lose a lot of players from this year’s team, including team MVP Kyle Young. They did add Tanner Holden from the transfer portal. Landing him is the best transfer portal addition Chris Holtmann has made in his five-year tenure in Columbus.

Holtmann brings in a top-five recruiting class next year. More additions from the transfer portal are expected. So what are fair expectations for this team heading into the sixth year of the Holtmann era? It’s going to be a tense year, I can assure you that.

The Sweet 16 is an absolute bare minimum threshold. The Ohio State basketball team has to either win a Big Ten title or make it to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament. If neither of those things happens, then the Buckeyes absolutely have to make a coaching change.

Holtmann has his roster. He’ll have no more excuses to make next season. If he can’t win with what he has, then he simply has to go. As far as where I think the team will finish, I expect a top-four finish in the Big Ten in the regular season and another disappointing loss on the first weekend of March Madness.

I hope I’m wrong. We’ll see what this team can do next year.