Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork is pleased with the job head men’s basketball coach Jake Diebler has done in his first year leading the program, he told 97.1 The Fan’s “Morning Juice” on Thursday.
“Jake’s doing a great job and really meeting our expectations,” Bjork said. “And now we just need to win those games that we were close on. And we know we can do it moving forward.”
Bjork, who made the decision to remove the interim tag off Diebler just over one year ago on March 17 after he led the Buckeyes to an 8-3 record in the team’s final 11 games, said that while it hasn’t been perfect this season, Diebler has put Ohio State right where it wants to be in March, where it is competing for a berth in the NCAA tournament.
According to bracketmatrix.com, which tracks 118 projected brackets across the internet, Ohio State — which currently boasts a 17-13 record and 8-10 mark in the Big Ten with one regular season game left, are in the 68-team field as a No. 11 seed, with 112 of those brackets having them in.
“We’re in the mix, right? And that’s what we said, we got to be in the mix,” Bjork said. “Now, could we have won some games that we had the lead in the last couple minutes and things like that? So there’s things that Jake is learning. But what I love is the passion, the energy, the connectivity with our players.”
Bjork also acknowledged that Diebler and his program have faced a lot of adversity this year, especially with their roster, which has seen key contributors such as Meechie Johnson Jr., Aaron Bradshaw, and others miss extended time either due to injury or forced/voluntary absence.
But regardless of who is in and who is out, the first-year athletic director thinks the Buckeyes are set up well for the future under the leadership of Diebler, who has shown that he both can function and succeed while leading a high-caliber program like Ohio State.
“We haven’t had a full roster the whole season,” Bjork said. “Somebody could probably do an analysis of how many games have we had a full roster? Meechie has been out the whole year. Aaron Bradshaw has been in and out of the lineup. We’ve had other guys kind of dinged up and nicked up. So once we have a full complement of this roster, once we engage in recruiting at a higher level, which Jake and the staff are doing, to me, sky is the limit for this program.”
Ohio State and Diebler will have a chance to further improve their NCAA tournament résumé on Saturday when it travels to historic Assembly Hall to take on fellow Big Ten bubble team Indiana. A win over the Hoosiers could very well clinch a spot for the Buckeyes while also securing them a single-bye in the Big Ten tournament next week as a No. 9 seed.
