COLUMBUS, Ohio – There were no trophies handed out this season after the men’s basketball season, no banners raised and obviously no games played in the cancelled NCAA Tournament. Many conferences had the chance to start their league tournaments, but everything came to a crashing halt within a short window and the madness of March took on a whole new meaning.

Nobody is any less mad here in April as the landscape remains without sports of any nature throughout the world in the grips of the COVID-19 pandemic.

It really was shaping up to be a wide-open tournament as there were not many ‘great’ teams across the nation but a lot of ‘good’ to ‘very good’ teams and with the tournament really coming down to match-ups and a matter of who could string together six games of ‘great’ basketball at the right time.

The Buckeyes were rounding into shape at the right time, winners of four of their last five and six of their last eight and even though the Buckeyes final game of the shortened season was a loss at Michigan State, there were a lot of people who were feeling pretty good about the Buckeyes in a tournament setting.

Now that we are more than five weeks out from Ohio State’s final game of the year, the question was asked to head coach Chris Holtmann on a Tuesday conference call if he has really had time to think about ‘what could have been?’

“I have thought about it more in the last couple of weeks than I did in the first couple weeks afterwards,” Holtmann said. “I am not exactly sure why, I think I just missed it, I think some of it came about from watching some of our games in the last month and a half. I have thought about it more the last couple of weeks and I just was really excited, and in some cases curious about what we could be.”

One thing that is not up for debate is just how strong the Big Ten was last season. That has not always equated to success for the conference in the NCAA Tournament, at least in terms of seeing a conference member cut down the nets after the final game.

But teams like Ohio State and everyone else in the conference was certainly looking forward to playing some teams that they have not played one, two or even more times (if there would have been a B1G Tourney) over the course of the year.

Ohio State certainly would have been rewarded with a decent seed, but with no bracket, nobody is quite sure who the Buckeyes would have drawn.

“I think in all likelihood we would have been a four, five or six, that is what we would have been,” Holtmann added. “When you are in those games, your first-round game is really hard, it just really is. So, there are no guarantees in any of that.”

The Buckeyes certainly would have entered the tournament short-handed in many regards with the health of Kyle Young very much still unknown after last playing against Maryland and missing four games after that. Alonzo Gaffney would ultimately announce his intentions to transfer as would DJ Carton, but neither were really in the mix at that time of the year but Luther Muhammad was still part of the team at that point.

So obviously, there were some issues, things that Holtmann was well aware of, but this team just found a way to persevere after a tumultuous January swoon saw many fans ‘sell’ on the Buckeyes.

“We had our flaws,” Holtmann said. “I am not delusional, but I do think we had a very good way about us.”

The Buckeyes in the previous two years under Holtmann won their opening round games of the NCAA Tournament with wins over South Dakota State (2018) and Iowa State (2019) before losses to Gonzaga (2018) and Houston (2019) ended Ohio State’s tournament run short of the second weekend.

No bracket was released this year, so while that did not stop the speculation of how far each tournament-worthy team would have gone, nobody will be quite sure what the path to a championship would have looked like and what teams could have stood in the way on a bracket.

“I think it would have been fun to take a look at that and know who we would have played in that first game and potentially in that second game and moving forward,” Holtmann said. “I would have liked to have seen that. I am sure that it would have made it harder. but I would have loved to have seen it. Having said that, I get why they didn’t do it.”

Holtmann’s final team at Butler in the 2016-17 season would make it to the Sweet Sixteen before falling to eventual national champion North Carolina. Could there have been some of that kind of potential out of this squad, a team that certainly went through the good and the bad en route to 21 wins?

“I think what probably gets me a little sour reflecting back is now you go look at… this is the first team that we had that finished top-10 in KenPom,” Holtmann said. “That is a really high number. I keep referring to that because there are some predictive measures to that, as much as you can be in the NCAA Tournament.”

The Buckeyes were No. 8, the second highest rated Big Ten team and only one spot behind Michigan State. The Big Ten would end with seven teams in the top-25 of the final KenPom rankings, 11 in the top-30.

Holtmann felt that his team would have been one of those teams that nobody would have wanted to face just based on the make-up of the team and the problems that a player like Kaleb Wesson would have presented.

“I did feel like our defense was just good enough but our offense was really efficient and when you have a very difficult match-up like Kaleb Wesson, with his ability inside and outside, I think that did give us a chance to really get to the second weekend,” Holtmann said. “I know that was a thing that our guys had talked about after winning a couple of games in our first two years, they had really talked about that. Who knows what could have happened after that? I did feel good about it.”