Ohio State hires Chris Holtmann as new head basketball coach

An early June head coach firing that was deemed to be “ill-timed” by many has resulted in Ohio State landing one of the brightest coaching stars in college basketball. According to multiple reports, OSU is set to announce that Chris Holtmann will be leaving Butler to take over the Buckeye program in 2017-18.

He’s receiving an eight-year deal that will pay him $3 million per season, per ESPN’s Jeff Goodman.

Holtmann spent three seasons as the head coach at Gardner-Webb before leaving to join Brandon Miller’s staff at Butler in the summer of 2013. A little over a year later, after Miller was forced to take a leave of absence for a health issue, Holtmann found himself as the Bulldogs’ interim head coach.

He would make sure the job remained his by winning 23 games and advancing to the third round of the NCAA tournament. Holtmann led Butler to 22 more wins and a second-round appearance in the Big Dance in 2015-16 and then guided the team to a 25-9 mark and a trip to the Sweet 16 last season.

Holtmann knows the state of Ohio well. He spent the bulk of his early life in neighboring Kentucky and Indiana, and he was an assistant with the Ohio Bobcats for two seasons before accepting the Gardner-Webb job.

At Ohio State, Holtmann will replace the school’s all-time winningest coach in Thad Matta, who was surprisingly let go earlier this week. Under Matta’s watch, OSU won at least 20 games in 12-consecutive seasons (2005-2016), a school record. He also led the Buckeyes to the Final Four in 2007 and 2012.

Poor recruiting wound up being Matta’s downfall at Ohio State. The Buckeyes missed the NCAA tournament in both 2016 and 2017 and don’t appear to have any players waiting in the wings with the potential to break that streak of futility. This is what Holtmann will be tasked with changing as he steps into what most would peg as a top-15 job in all of college basketball.