It seems likely Jan. 2, 2021, was the pivotal day in Malaki Branham’s basketball career — and also for Chris Holtmann.
Branham wound up in the NBA.
Holtmann wound up unemployed.
And they were on the same side.
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Entering the third month of his freshman season then, after nearly a full month off because of games canceled due to the lingering COVID-19 pandemic, Branham scored 35 points against Nebraska. In his first 10 appearances, against such opponents as Towson, Niagara, and Bowling Green, he’d only once scored as many as 11. So, this breakout against the Huskers at Pinnacle Bank Arena was a moment that seemed to offer considerable promise for the Buckeyes, their coach, and their new star shooting guard.
How could it have been the beginning of the end? Because the idea of Branham as a one-and-done was born that day. He’d been ranked the No. 35 prospect in his high school class. He was an in-state kid, from the Catholic school in Akron that produced LeBron James and Jerome Lane. Such a recruit would be expected to play a minimum of two seasons, maybe three, and possibly four if it took a little time to get things going.
Ohio State lost him less than three months later when Branham officially declared for the NBA Draft. That's when Holtmann began the process of losing his job. And it accelerated a year later when much the same thing occurred with Brice Sensabaugh, who had been rated No. 86 in his class.
There are many reasons Holtmann’s dismissal was announced Wednesday, some of them in his control, some not. There may have been no more emphatic force in the direction of the program, though, than the one-and-done departures of two players who were good enough to be first-round selections in what’s become of the NBA Draft but did exactly nothing to revolutionize the program.
When the Buckeyes finish the 2023-24 season, it will represent the second year in a row they missed the NCAA Tournament. That doesn’t seem like a lot, especially after four consecutive bids (five if you want to count a likely No. 5 seed had there been a 2020 March Madness). But it started to feel like a lot this year. The first failure came a year after Branham left. The second came a year after Sensabaugh.
Even in the transfer portal era, it's a challenge to build a successful program when top recruits are leaving for the pros without having achieved much of significance, especially when there’s no cause to expect they'll enter the draft after one year. The team that signs Kevin Durant knows he’s leaving after a single season before his big toe hits the campus ground. Ohio State was not afforded that luxury in either case.
That almost always results in a calamity.
Between 2010 and 2019, there were 39 one-and-done players selected in the first round of the NBA Draft without having won an NCAA Tournament game during their college seasons. The coaches of 27 of those players were fired, forced out, or left under pressure within five years, including Final Four veterans Rick Barnes at Texas, Ben Howland at UCLA, and Tom Crean at Indiana.
Six of those one-and-dones played for Hall of Famers who could endure beyond such disappointment: Mike Krzyzewski, John Calipari, Jim Calhoun, and Jim Boeheim. This means for those coaches who weren’t enshrined in Springfield (or clearly on their way), there was an 82 percent chance signing such a player and seeing him enter the draft without going all Greg Oden on the world was like lining up to collect unemployment — or a multi-million-dollar buyout, anyway.
And in the case of both Branham and Sensabaugh, their departures could not have been anticipated. It was obvious Ben Simmons was leaving LSU after spending the 2015-16 season with the Tigers – did he even unpack his bags? But the two Buckeyes were entirely unexpected. Of the players in this subgroup, 23 were top-10 prospects in their class and 32 were in the top 20.
Only two coaches had to deal with multiple “surprise” one-and-dones. Lorenzo Romar had two in his 2015 class at Washington: guard Dejounte Murray and wing Marquese Chriss. Their team went 19-15 and did not reach the NCAAs. Romar coached the Huskies one more year. Holtmann followed a similar course and met a similar end in Columbus.
This is not to say Holtmann and his staff did not make mistakes or miss opportunities. The Buckeyes lacked elite point guard play through much of his tenure. Their average rank in assist rate during the past seven seasons was 173. That didn’t stop them from being exceptional, at times, on offense; five of those teams ranked in the KenPom.com top 25 in efficiency, including as high as No. 4 in the 2020-21 season.
On defense, an operation that ranked among college basketball’s best in Holtmann’s first three seasons declined precipitously over the past four. Some of that was roster composition, particularly a number of smaller guards who did not contain or disrupt the basketball.
But a lot of it, as well, was youth. The past three seasons, the Buckeyes ranked 137th in Division I experience. At a time when college basketball was getting older because of the sudden taste for transfers and the extra year of eligibility granted because of the pandemic, the Buckeyes’ most promising players were off gaining experience in the NBA.
Sensabaugh has played six games since Christmas for the Utah Jazz and 20 times for the Salt Lake City Stars in the G League. Branham has played 50 times for the San Antonio Spurs and scored a season-best 19 points on Valentine’s Day. No one would suggest this hasn’t turned out nicely for them, and that’s part of the goal when recruiting basketball players for a college program.
It’s not the most important goal, though.
That moment arrives in March, not June.
