COLUMBUS, Ohio – The Ohio State men's basketball team has been busy in the month of July going through practices as the team gets ready for a 10-day tour of Spain in early August and three games overseas as Chris Holtmann's young squad gets its first taste of competition as a unit.

Gone are players like Keita Bates-Diop, Jae'Sean Tate and Kam Williams and new faces like Keyshawn Woods and Luther Muhammad among others will be looked to keep the Buckeye resurgence in basketball moving forward.

There will be some key returners like C.J. Jackson, the Wesson brothers with Kaleb and Andre as well as others but this team is going to look very different than the team that was five minutes away from making it to the Sweet Sixteen in Boise (Idaho) last season.

"We have a new team in a lot of ways, six new guys and combined with a lot of returners," Holtmann said on Tuesday afternoon before the team's fourth practice leading into the trip to Spain. "Looking forward to continuing to work with them."

The team will get to play three games while on the trip and it will be a good chance to shake off the rust of the returning veterans and introduce four new freshmen and a grad transfer to action in an Ohio State uniform. But more importantly than that, it will be a chance for the bond between teammates to really develop as they share this experience of traveling overseas.

"I really do believe a good multi-cultural experience for our players," Holtmann added. "If we are going to preach education to our guys and preach the importance of that, then we want to use these trips as that and I don’t want that to be lost in all of this. We want it to be a great cross-cultural experience for all of our players."

Many basketball fans see this as a chance to get a head start with the early team practices but there is a lot of work to be done and while this trip will be invaluable in the long run in terms of bringing the group together, don't look for any competitive advantage coming out of this trip.

"I don’t think a whole lot can be done in 10 days in Spain and 10 practices to be honest with you," Holtmann said. "It is a little bit of a slow drip and going to take some time and we are going to have to go through some difficult stuff for that to really grow. It helps, the time together helps. I think we will be put in some difficult situations, but I don't think that is going to really be what want it to be until we are months into this thing as a group."

The schedule will be difficult for the Buckeyes once the games start to count and this young Ohio State team will be challenged early.

"We have got some tough ones early, and a lot of tough ones, not just ones the we think about with Cincinnati and Creighton," Holtmann said. "We have many others that are going to be a real challenge. It is good for us to get some playing experience and wanting to be ready, a little more-ready than what we were last year."

Is Holtmann ready for this trip to Spain with his team? How is the Spanish, can the Ohio State head coach speak the language?

"A little bit, very little," Holtmann joked. "I studied four years of Spanish, but it has been dormant for about 20 years, we will see if I can pull it out here."