COLUMBUS, Ohio – A quickly changing recruiting landscape paired with alterations come about by the COVID-19 pandemic has made this period of time one of the most unique recruiting periods in the history of college basketball.

With highly-rated recruits turning into top prospects that either stay a year in college or go directly to the G-League or professional leagues overseas, recruiting is as dynamic and intricate as it has ever been. Mix the new mindset of a recruit with the changed form of recruiting due to the pandemic and teams like Ohio State have been forced to adjust.

There is a new divide between highly-talented players and experienced ones, so building a championship-caliber roster is as difficult as ever. With teams like Michigan losing a pair of five-star recruits, one to Arizona State and another to professional basketball overseas, a team’s makeup is not set in stone and change is constant.

Ohio State has recently had to lean on transfers in order to fill spots left by players who transferred out of the program, and Chris Holtmann spoke to the fact that no matter the journey a player takes to be a Buckeye, the team is looking for the right fit above anything else.

“I think you have to be mindful of all of those trends in our games, but the bulk for us will always be those high school players that develop - high school prep school kids that develop in our program,” Holtmann said. “But we'll certainly be a blend as well, and I think more than anything, we're looking for the right fit.”

When it comes to going after one-and-done players, Holtmann did not close the door on the possibility of recruiting such players. While his rosters in the past have largely been made up of multi-year players, Holtmann is more concerned about a player’s desire to be at Ohio State.

“I think he has to want to play at Ohio State and play for a championship and be a part of that experience,” Holtmann said. “Like, I think he’d have to really, you know, he’d have to value that. And he'd have to value what this place can do a tremendous amount for young men like that.”

On top of the challenges that have been presented with the new mindsets of players, the COVID-19 pandemic has created a landscape of social distancing.

While a regular spring would be a time for in-person recruiting, the unique circumstances have forced Holtmann and his staff to adjust with the times in order to keep up.

“You're trying to build relationships as much as you can face to face because normally that's what we would be doing right now in the spring is having people to campus, so that's really occupied a lot of our time,” Holtmann said about using video conferencing. to recruit.

While the pandemic has forced the adoption of video conferencing in order to continue recruiting, it is not something that is new to the Ohio State basketball recruitment process. Holtmann explained that current player E.J. Liddell and 2020 commits Zed Key and Eugene Brown were all recruited with the help of video conferencing.

The pandemic may have forced some schools to lean on the new communication platform more, but Ohio State has been looking to use technology to connect with recruits. Even when normalcy returns, Holtmann and his staff will likely continue to use the new form of communication to enhance their recruitment process.

“I think it's just become a norm and now we're doing more kind of presentations through Zoom or FaceTime,” Holtmann said.