Ohio State basketball: Gene Smith’s extension to Chris Holtmann looks foolish

The Ohio State basketball team is having the worst season they’ve had in 20 years. Not since the final year of Jim O’Brien’s tenure have the Buckeyes been under .500 this late in the year. Chris Holtmann is certainly hearing the calls from fans for him to be fired.

But Holtmann almost certainly won’t get fired after this year, no matter how much worse it gets. Ohio State has lost 10 of their last 11 games and sits at 11-13 overall. Holtmann’s team now has two separate five-game losing streaks in 2023. So why won’t he get fired?

Because of Gene Smith’s stupidity. Smith gave Holtmann a contract extension at the end of last season for no reason. Holtmann had just failed to make it to the second round of the NCAA Tournament for the fifth-straight year and still had two years left on his deal.

Now with the new extension, Holtmann’s buyout has increased to $20 million. That’s a really onerous amount of money to fire a coach. Because of that, he is likely to make it at least one more season. Smith is now hamstrung because of his own stupidity.

In no world should the Ohio State basketball program be under .500 after having a top-five recruiting class. That is not the standard of the program. That’s especially true when the team hasn’t made it to the Sweet 16 under Holtmann. It’s clear this job is too big for him.

Unfortunately, Buckeye fans will have to wait longer to see someone else come in and take the job. There’s no indication that Smith will even fire him next season if Holtmann has a repeat performance. He has another great recruiting class coming in next season. Holtmann can recruit, I’ll give him that.

The on-court results haven’t been good enough. Buckeye basketball fans have stopped paying attention to games on a nightly basis. The Schott is half-filled in most games. There’s an easy way to fix all of this, but Smith made his bed and now has to lie in it.