What To Expect From Jake Diebler in His First NCAA Tournament With Ohio State

After Jake Diebler took over the Ohio State Buckeyes as an interim head coach late in the 2023-24 season, he led the Buckeyes to the NIT tournament and made a run.

The Buckeyes missed out on any postseason play last year after finishing 17-15. Now in his second full season, Diebler has the team sitting at 21-12 on the year and preparing for a return to March Madness with a first round matchup against TCU.

Here’s what to expect out of coach Diebler in his first ever NCAA Tournament.

First Round Matchup

In his first game, Diebler will have no easy task as Ohio State is the eight seed, and they will face the nine seeded Horned Frogs. TCU is led by a coach with plenty of coaching experience in Jamie Dixon. He's been to the tournament 16 times.

Diebler has a few advantages going for him as he prepares for the biggest game of his career so far. For starters, he’s been with the program for the past 10 years in different roles. He’s been a part of Ohio State for the last five tournament appearances. In that time Ohio State has won five tournament games under head coaches Chris Holtmann and Thad Matta. This includes a Sweet 16 appearance in the 2014-15 season.

Diebler has also played in some big games before. His first game as an interim head coach was a win over the second ranked team in the country, the Purdue Boilermakers. That season Ohio State took down both Cornell and Virginia Tech in the NIT tournament before finally losing to Georgia.

While this is easily Diebler’s biggest game, it’s nothing he shouldn’t be able to handle. The Buckeyes are the favorites and guys like Bruce Thornton are going to be hungry to get a tournament win before his college career is over.

TCU is a great team who can dominate with their defense and play physical ball in the paint. Expect Diebler to be able to craft a gameplan built around slowing down TCU’s transition, and minimizing the amount of damage they can do in the paint.

At worst, Diebler should be able to make this a competitive and entertaining game. The expectation will be for Ohio State to win their first tournament game since 2022.

Later rounds

Ohio State’s path gets extremely difficult right away. If they defeat TCU, they will have a likely matchup against the highest ranked team in the entire tournament, the Duke Blue Devils.

It’ll be a great chance for Diebler to get some real experience in these tournaments. He’ll be an underdog with low expectations until the Buckeyes fall. Any other win will be a major boost on Diebler’s resume.

Don’t have the expectation that Ohio State will breeze through and make a serious run, but do expect Diebler to learn and grow as a coach. The focus should be on the adjustments he is able to make from game to game, and even half to half.

If things go well, this could be Diebler’s chance to prove that he deserves to be the head coach for a long time with the Buckeyes.