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Is It Time For Ohio State Basketball To Move On From Chris Holtmann? · Buckeyes TomOrrow Morning

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Welcome to Buckeyes tomorrow morning from Monday, January twenty ninth time, your host
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Tom Moore. The Akron game is in two hundred and fifteen days, The
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Gammick is fishing in three hundred and six days. We are not talking football
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today. We are talking basketball. Everyone, come in, sit down.
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We need to have a conversation about Chris Holtman. Ohio State basketball is going
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nose down into the ground right now. Is they are in a fourteen game
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road losing streak in the Big Ten is just it is a mess right now.
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They just went to Northwestern on Saturday night and just got run out of
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the building by twenty five points. Tony Gerdeman is here to have this extremely
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uplifting conversation with me. Tony, do you agree it is probably about time
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to have a conversation about Chris Holtman in the direction of the Ohio State basketball
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program. Well, we're here, aren't we. It's come to this point
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where now we are talking about it, and this is one of those games
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some point. It's at one point in the second second half, Ohio State
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had been outscored thirty three to ten, and it felt like this was a
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culmination of just the last month or so. And I know we'll all point
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to the annual January slide or whatever, but there's been very little redeeming quality
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for this season, whereas other seasons have had some things. And you know,
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you had to what the win over Alabama earlier in the season, and
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you know, glimpsing being ranked, but by now in year whatever of Chris
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Holtman's era, it feels like looking at the horizon and seeing the rankings is
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well well short of where they should be right now. Yeah, and if
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you're not following basketball particularly closely, Northwestern is not anything fantastic this year.
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They are forty seventh right now in the Ken Pom rankings here Ohio States Ken
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Palm rankings under Chris Holtman that first year where he came in and looked like,
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holy smokes, this guy is a wizard. But they were sixteenth second
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year to a step back there, forty fourth, third year, eighth,
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fourth year, eleventh, and then thirty first, forty ninth, and now
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they are sixty first to date this season. The trend, as they say,
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is not your friend in this case. I think the thing that is
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maybe most concerning to me other than the sort of repetitive, almost predictive.
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You can you just these seasons also are starting to look the same, and
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that's not a good thing. Is they're just there is very clearly is just
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not a lot of answers right now for Chris Holtman, because after the Nebraska
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game, he said, quote, we weren't physical or tough enough. This
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is all that is ultimately on me. We were too soft to times to
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the ball, soft with our cuts, and soft defensively. We've got to
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get better in that better in that area. That was clear. I think
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you saw it on the glass for sure. And then they went out against
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Northwestern, which again is not exactly an elite program, got out rebounded,
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got lost by twenty five. After that, he said, quote, we
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have to be better. Bottom line, we just have to be better across
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the board, all of us players, coaches, we have to be better.
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Who's asked whether this team can still improve, he said, quote,
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absolutely we can. We have to find a way. Bottom line, we
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have to find a way. Tony, that that all seems rather short on
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specifics. That just seems like, well, maybe you know, if something
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changes, then something will change. That does that feels like someone sort of
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stumbling around a dark room looking for something and not having a lot of luck.
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It sounds like some wishery and you read those quotes and you're like,
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well, tell us something we don't know. We know you need to do
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better at this, We know you need to fix this. How do you
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do it? And right now the how has not been presented and has not
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shown up on the court. And whether it's you know, they're drawing up
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clean looks for their jump shooters, the shots aren't falling, then you gotta
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do something else because the shots have not been falling for a while with this
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team, so you've got to figure something else out, whether it's you know,
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better defense or being more careful with the ball, slowing things down,
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whatever it takes. Like, you've got to find a way to win.
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And more often than not over the past couple of years and this year as
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well, they're finding ways to lose, especially last year. You know you
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mentioned this road losing streak. The last road wind was what January first of
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twenty twenty three at Northwestern and then it seemed like Northwestern didn't want to have
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that repeated this time out and just put Ohio State in a blender and they
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were doing this early on without their best scorer scoring like they were doing this
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with their team. And right now Ohio State's team is you've got Bruce Thornton,
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who has been up and down, and Roddy Gale have been up and
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down. Those two are the cornerstone of the program. But they're sophomores,
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and you know they were talented freshman last year and the youth you understood last
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year, they're going to be struggles as sophomores. Note now in college basketball,
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you can't really can't really afford to just sophomore should be able to produce
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like juniors and seniors. That's just the way it does. Everything is sped
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up in college basketball, and sophomore that might be the last year you get
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them. Heck, we've seen the last couple of years in Ohio State,
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freshmen might be the last year you get them. So maybe the lack of
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development has also been a concern where you know, you lose Malachi brand him
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as a true freshman, so you don't know what he would have become as
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a sophomore or junior if you would have been the same. And the concerning
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part is maybe he would have been the same because the development hasn't necessarily been
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there over the last few years, either individually and especially as a team.
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When you look at the just the record, the trajectory of things, and
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you see the double digit losses every year, and they're just getting higher and
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higher. And I don't know if they'll reach the nineteen losses from last year,
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but if they don't win anymore, they sure might. Yeah, And
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the trend every year, it's a little spooky how similar these seasons are.
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Are a mutual acquaintance of ours at B one G Underscore. Ryan had a
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tweet from October twenty twenty two where he just said, this is just the
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Chris Holtman season essentially one leak, poor scrimmage. Two. Talked about teams
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Youth three beat expectations through New Year's Eve, earned media's admiration for quote overperforming.
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Four collapse in January slash February because of poor coaching, Blame it on
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Youth five, recover from March, rebuild expectations, get extension six laps again,
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first weekend exit and it's like that seems kind of mean, but also
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not. You can't really point at that and go, no, that's not
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correct, and that was posted October twenty fourth, twenty twenty two. That's
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two seasons ago, and I think people are maybe getting to the point where
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they're not going to fall for the banana and the tailpipe anymore. With the
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basketball program, where it's like, well, look they're twelve and two,
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and Jeff Goodman is tweeting about where are the Chris Holton the haters now?
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And then immediately they lose to Indiana, lose to Wisconsin, lose to a
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Michigan team that has not beaten anyone else, beat Penn State, lose at
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Nebraska, lose at Northwestern, and they've got Illinois and Iowa and Indiana and
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Maryland and Wisconsin and Purdue and coming up. I mean, this is this
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is not necessarily going to get better anytime soon. So then the question becomes,
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Okay, is it time to make a change. And one of the
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big factors in that conversation is he was given a three year extension in a
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five hundred thousand dollars rays in March of twenty twenty two. Those a year
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they were the seven they were seven seed in the tournament. So I know
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you have to give contract extensions because you don't want to get to the point
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where you're coaching in the last year or your contract, because that'll kill recruiting.
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So I kind of get you get you have to get give some kind
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of extension. That was probably that is probably one that if Jean Smith had
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to do it all over again, he would probably not make that same decision.
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So under that extension, Chris Saltan has four years left. At three
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and a half million dollars, that totals fourteen million dollars left on that deal.
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Tony. That's a lot of money. And I feel like we're at
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the point where you've got the sunk cost fallacy working against opportunity costs, because
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the sun cost fallacy is basically, well, we've put all this money into
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this, We've invested all of this money and time into this. We don't
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want to pull the rip cord yet, even when you know maybe this is
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not going to improve. And then the other problem is opportunity cost because every
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dollar you spend on a Chris Holton buy out, you can't spend on something
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else. And there's plenty of other demands on athletic department funding and donor money
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right now. So I guess what do you do? Here do you is
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this? Do you think Chris Holtman looks at this and kind of goes,
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well, I don't really have an answer, and I don't you know,
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is there a path forward for Chris Holtan at Ohio State? Well, doesn't
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he have to provide an answer? I think that's the key there. When
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Jean Smith and Thad had their discussion in June of a few years back,
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when that ultimately got fired, that really had no answers for Gene in terms
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of the future, the recruiting things like that. And so if Jeane Smith,
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who is still in charge until July first, so this is his call
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right now, if he sits down and talks to Chris Holtman about it,
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and Chris Holtman has no answers or doesn't have the right answers, then that
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kind of tells you it's time to move on. Now. Do you want
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to take that expense? Because you look at the annual attendance figures, they're
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going down every year, so you're losing, and not that they're ever going
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to sell out consistently at Value City Arena. They never have and they never
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will. Place is too big and interest is lessened every year that's all sports,
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that's all you know, live events. I can we can all just
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watch it at home. And even unless they put all of the game on
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peak, all of the games on peak, then maybe that will drive some
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people back to the arena. But you know, you're leaving four or five
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six thousand empty seats in the arena every night, and I don't think it's
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going to get any better, especially when if it continues to stay employed at
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Ohio State and you just have this expectation, you've we've all seen it,
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So why would next year be different? Even if they start out twelve and
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two again like that has been seen before. So you know, Thad Modol
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was let go after like one bad season and they were still over five hundred.
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You're now into a second bad season, and not that Ohio State can
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still pull out of this somehow. I like, if they win most of
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their games, they can still get to the tournament, But why do we
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expect that to happen based on what we've seen to this point? And then
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you also have to figure in the reports that win the Big Ten expands next
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year only like fifteen of the top of the twenty Big Ten or the sixty
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eighteen Big Ten teams are going to be making the Big Ten Tournament, So
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there's also that two factor in as well, So you know, Badmota didn't
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didn't get this much the way with way more credit builds up, so you
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know, obviously the money is big. But I'm with you, like I
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the lack of interest? Does that save ironically save Holtman here? It's an
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interesting question because the lack of interest, I mean, the program is just
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kind of dead right now. There's not I think this is the second show
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we've done on basketball this entire academic year, and I cannot recall any comments
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saying you guys should do more coverage of basketball. It's just the level of
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interest is just not there. To your point, you know, even if
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they're twelve and if they go twelve and two next year, I think people
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are just going to kind of shrug and say, well, let's see what
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happens in January. The twelve and two build up during football season, basketball
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is kind of an afterthought anyway. I do wonder about the lack of interest
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in basketball because everyone, you know, I think if you polled Ohio State
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fans right now, a lot of them would say you probably need to make
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a change. If you pull Ohio State fans in, you know, next
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November when Ohio State's playing Michigan and you know they have Caleb Downs on the
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field versus not having Caleb Downs on the field, like you would be glad
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you had Caleb Downs on the field if Michigan is driving for the tying touchdown
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something like that. Well, there are resources involved in bringing your players back.
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There's resources. You know, there's nil deals and that's not coming directly
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from the schools, but it's coming directly from the donors. And the money
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to make a change at the head basketball coach position is at least somewhat coming
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from the same donors. Now, maybe there's some big pocketed basketball only donor
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who doesn't care at all about football and it's really two separate buckets of money.
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But honestly, d Ohio State fans really care that much that they would
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prefer to have a change in basketball if that also comes at the expense of,
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you know, not having as many resources for football. So yeah,
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it's possible that that forces a change. It just we would have to dive
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into the ticket revenue drop and all that kind of stuff, and how much
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would a ticket revenue. How much ticket would TKET revenue increase if you do
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bring in a new person. The other, possibly the other question is you
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have seen coaches and in the past taking negotiated by out for less money than
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their own. Paul christ is a great example. He was the head coach
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of Wisconsin football, was a Wisconsin guy, Wisconsin lifer. He was owed
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twenty million dollars by Wisconsin. He took an eleven million dollar buy out.
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They sort of, you know, it was kind of like, yeah,
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okay, I get it. I understand that you want to make a change.
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I understand the reason that you want to make a change, even if
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they're totally agree with it. I don't need to take twenty million dollars because
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I care about the program and all kind of stuff. So you might,
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you know, can you get it down to eight million dollars something like that.
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I don't know if that's something that Holton's willing to do or not.
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If it does come to that kind of conversation, that's another piece of this
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conversation as well, though, So it just do you what do you think
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happens? I mean, and the other factor, Tony is you've got to
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change an athletic director coming up, and you know who who is ultimately the
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one who's going to make this call. Is it Geene Smith who's heading out
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the door? Is it Ross Byork who's coming in? But it doesn't start
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until July, but they start having conversations. Because one thing that really struck
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me at Ross Beryorke's introductory press conference, Ran Day was sitting there right there
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in the seats with us right right next to him and get talked about a
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bunch and you know, glowing reviews from Ross Bjork and Chris Holtman was like
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standing way over to the side of the room one hundred feet away, and
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there was like maybe sort of one indirect reference to basketball, and that was
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it. And it was kind of like, hmm, I don't I don't
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know that ross Byorke feels like he needs to make super good friends with Chris
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Haltan because I don't know that they're going to be coworkers for that long.
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Well, and after this last game against Northwestern, I think I came to
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the belief that I wouldn't be shocked if Chris Halton didn't make it to the
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end of the season, because I'm not sure that you won't see more games
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like this, and then how many more games like this can you allow to
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happen before you do something? But then I go back to that same conversation
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that Jean Smith and Chris Halton will have, like what are your answers?
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And if you don't have the answers, then you know, would it would
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you look like the bigger person if you did take a negotiated buyout as opposed
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to no, I want everything, even though I have not been able to
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fulfill my end of the bargain. And when we talked to Ross Gyork,
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he said the goals for all the programs will be championships. And I tweeted
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out the other day the other day that oh, I stayed. Basketball fans
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can't realistically think the national championship is a goal because you've got one in over
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sixty years. But it's more than this. It's competing for the Big ten.
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It's getting into the tournament, making some noise in the tournament, being
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a team that is known nationally for good things and instead of bad things.
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And right now things just are not trending well, and in factor trending worse
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and worse as you go on. So I would be pretty surprised if he
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is here for the length of his contract, And I would not be very
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surprised if that is done before March. And you know, I have no
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information on that. Just the way things are going and from what we have
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seen, where is the where's the optimism? Yeah, and well, I
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don't think a national championship is necessarily a reasonable expectation for Ohio State. You
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can, certainly, you have seen teams just get hot. You can win
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the national Championship as a team that enters the tournament is a twenty fifth best
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team in the country. If you just get hot and win six games,
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it's not like that's impossible. But that's also not a realistic If you haven't
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done this since nineteen sixty, you've gotten close a couple of times. If
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you haven't done it since ninety sixty, obviously that's not a realistic expectation.
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That could be a hope, it's not an expectation making the final four.
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That's that's not a that's not unrealistic. They've done that a bunch of times,
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four times since nineteen ninety nine, something like that. Five times,
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that's realistic. This is Holtman's seventh season, he's never reached the sweet sixteen.
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That's that's that's a problem. You have to you have to get to
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the second weekend, certainly, and if you're losing the El eight, okay,
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that's fine. But you can't get to the sweet sixteen, even as
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a two seed losing to Oral Robert. It's just yeah, I'm with you.
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I think there's it needs to be a conversationship, conversation about where do
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you go from here? How do you stop this slide? Because right now
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the plane is going into the side of the mountain, So you need to,
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you know, while the basketball program is hearing terrain terrain pull up,
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what is the plan to pull up? Because the current trajectory is unsustainable.
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So we'll find out whether whether there is a plan and whether there is a
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change. It's gonna come during the season, after the season. A lot
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of different factors in there, financially, personnel, and much much more.
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Boy, it is definitely a time for Ohio State basketball. That's for sure.
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Good news. At buckey Huddle dot com, we talk a lot more
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about football than we do about basketball, and the news on the back the
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football front has been much more positive recently. You can join us there to
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talk about that. If you want to talk about basketball, there are some
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threads on our board about basketball as well. Not a lot of answers there
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either, well, but you can you can. Let's focus on the football
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good times there. The men's tennis team having a successful a successful run recently,
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the women's hockey team number one in the nation. There's some good stuff
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going on at Ohio State, and you can talk about it all at bucke
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huddle dot com. That will do it for today. Thank you guys all
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for joining us. Have a great day. We will talk to you tomorrow.