The Ohio State basketball team could move on from head coach Jake Diebler this spring. the Buckeyes would owe the head coach a buyout.
The Ohio State Buckeyes were outclassed on Sunday in an 82-61 loss to No. 2 Michigan on Sunday in front of 17,684 fans at Value City Arena.
The lopsided defeat was a bad look for head coach Jack Diebler, and dropped the Buckeyes to 15-8 overall on the season and 7-6 in Big Ten play.
The NCAA Tournament is starting to look out of reach for the coach in his second full-time season with the program.
Diebler is 37-25 with OSU and 21-18 in Big Ten play.
Per Pete Nakos of On3, Diebler is on the hot seat after the loss to Michigan. The Buckeyes expect the program to make the NCAA Tournament, and missing the Big Dance could cause the team to part ways with Diebler in the spring.
Ohio State would owe Diebler a $5 million buyout if they fired him after the regular season.
Following Sunday's loss to the Wolverines, Diebler argued Ohio State lacked physicality against its rival.
“I don’t know that I would say there was a lack of effort; there was a major lack of physicality,” Diebler said, via A to Z Sports. “Those are two different things. I mean, there’s some correlation to some degree.
But we didn’t lack effort; we lacked major physicality. And to give you an example, a shot goes up, it’s not like we weren’t running hard to the rim. The problem was, we were running hard to the rim, and not running hard to hit somebody, and creating contact so we could rebound down the floor."
Diebler understands the pressure is mounting for him to earn some wins in the late stages of the regular season. He said he's working hard to get OSU to become a championship program.
"Listen, I said this from the day I got this job," Diebler said, via On3. "Myself, our staff, these players, there’s a standard in this program that we don’t run from. College basketball is different now than it’s ever been... But we’re working as hard as we can to get back.
"We’re not trying to just be good, right? Trying to win championships here, and that’s what we’re working towards. And I’m not afraid of that, I’m not afraid of that at all. We’re taking steps, we’re getting better, we’ve shown some improvement."
However, the improvement might not be enough to warrant another season for Diebler.