PITTSBURGH — “I’ve stolen so much from him and his program.”
Chris Holtmann looks up to Jay Wright: the way he teaches the game of basketball, his motivation techniques, his roster management and recruiting. All are things the Ohio State head coach saw up close during his days at Butler, watching the Villanova head coach — the elder statesman and example in the Big East — build up his powerhouse.
Holtmann made it clear it’s not an exact copy of what Wright has built. He’s putting his own spin on things, combining and forging new ideas from multiple programs and coaches he’s faced during his career. The influence is there, though, from his approach to in-game rotations to his emphasis on defensive and offensive versatility.
Sunday afternoon, that’s what Holtmann fell victim to: an idea of his own plan for Ohio State.
Ohio State couldn’t match the experience of Villanova, a team that rallied around the defensive plea of Wright and the veteran members of the roster when the Buckeyes began its comeback.
“They had a stretch where they were hitting shot after shot, and we just said ‘Attitude,’ stuck together and came together on the defensive end and told each other, ‘Let's get this next stop. Let's get this next stop,’ and tried to make the next play,” Villanova redshirt senior guard Collin Gillespie said.
Cutting the Wildcats’ deficit to two after a 3-point make by Jamari Wheeler, Ohio State faltered the rest of the way, missing six of their final seven shots, a continuation of the struggles that plagued the offense in the first half.
To E.J. Liddell, that’s what allowed Villanova to break away: their older and experienced roster, playing hard when it counted most, leaving the junior forward stunned at the podium after what’s been presumed to be his final game in a Buckeye uniform.
“I don't think reality has really kicked in yet that I wouldn't be able to… this certain group of guys, it was a lot of guys’ last games. Older guys. Seniors,” he said. “It's tough, man. I'm really hurting inside. I wish I could have done more to help get it done.”
It’s a stage the Wildcats are used to, playing great teams in big-time atmospheres, a pressure Villanova is used to.
The Wildcats have been there before, allowing them to fight through it and not to panic. That’s what three Final Fours and two national championships brings to a program.
But it wasn’t always that way for Wright.
Between 2010-15, Villanova didn’t make a Sweet 16, falling twice in the first round, twice in the second round and failing to make the tournament altogether in 2012 before winning a national title in 2016.
“It's just part of the journey,” Wright said. “You've got to accept what your journey is and you've got to learn from it. I think we played really good teams in the second round. I don't think we ever lost a second round game where we didn't show up to play. So if that was the case, we would have changed some things, but I thought our guys brought it.
“I can give you a different story for each one but never something that we thought, okay, we gotta change what we're doing. We just understand that's the experience of playing in the NCAA Tournament. You can get tough match-ups, you can get a tough night and as long as you're bringing great effort and great attitude every game you accept what the outcome is. We understand we have to answer to that. We get it.”
That’s where Holtmann sat Sunday afternoon, feeling the weight of what Wright felt between 2010-15, finishing off five-straight 20-win seasons, four-straight NCAA Tournament berths in five years with Ohio State without a chance to see what his team could do in the second weekend.
In 2021-22, the effort to make that leap was clouded with injuries and adversity, losing key depth pieces in Justice Sueing and Seth Towns for most of the season, pieces that could have helped round out an Ohio State team that would have had the offensive and defensive versatility Holtmann’s looking for.
For the majority of the season, Holtmann was just searching for the production to fill that Sueing and Towns-shaped hole, getting some of that production back from a vastly improved Liddell and breakout freshman Malaki Branham.
But it wasn’t enough. He was still searching for that next piece.
Some nights it was Kyle Young, who came in and out of the starting lineup as he battled through injuries in his final season. Some nights it was Zed Key: the sophomore forward, who played like the “center” the Buckeyes needed him to be some nights, but showed an inability to be that versatility Holtmann expects from an inside guy. Some nights it was Wheeler, Cedric Russell, Joey Brunk, Justin Ahrens or Eugene Brown III.
But it wasn’t consistent. It wasn’t Villanova.
“We have been kinda searching for that and we have missed that third, fourth and sometimes fifth option,” Holtmann said.
Completing his fifth year with the Buckeyes in Pittsburgh, Holtmann’s in the same part of the journey Wright was in 10 years ago: that no-man’s land of being good enough to make it to the dance, but leaving early.
The head coach was adamant that the more Ohio State plays in the NCAA Tournament, the more experience the Buckeyes have on that stage against teams like Villanova, that second weekend will come.
It worked for Wright.
“I believe in what we're doing and I'm more than confident it's going to happen,” Holtmann said. “It's hard to win in this tournament. If you go back and look at the number of years I've been a head coach and the number of NCAA Tournament wins, it's pretty good.
“We feel good about what we're doing.”
