The Ohio State Buckeyes won’t be going to the NCAA tournament this year, but they do have their new head coach: Jake Diebler, formerly the interim head coach.
Diebler’s promotion was made official Sunday with an announcement from the school.
Ohio State lost to Illinois in the quarterfinals of the Big Ten tournament on Friday, ending its season and any hope the Buckeyes had of making the Big Dance. But their very presence at that stage of the conference tournament was a triumph in itself. Diebler took over in mid-February after head coach Chris Holtmann started Big Ten play off 4-10. From there, Diebler was able to bring the Buckeyes together and make them competitive, going 6-2 the rest of the way and earning the No. 10 seed in the Big Ten tournament after some big wins over Michigan State and Nebraska. The Buckeyes won their first-round game there over Iowa before falling to Illinois.
Ohio State went 20-13 this season with a 9-11 conference record. The team was 14-11 when Holtmann was fired.
Diebler, 37, is an Ohio native who is in second stint with Ohio State. A former collegiate player at Valparaiso, he spent four years on staff there following his graduation before joining Ohio State as a video coordinator in 2014. He left in 2016 to become an assistant coach at Vanderbilt, then returned to Ohio State in 2019 to become an assistant on Holtmann’s staff.
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