No introduction was necessary for Paul Biancardi, but the handshake was inevitable.
Nearby, the crowd at Value City Arena was still roaring, enjoying the euphoria that accompanied a 35-30 halftime lead on No. 2 Purdue amid a tumultuous time for Ohio State men’s basketball. Four days earlier, athletic director Gene Smith had fired coach Chris Holtmann and offered associate head coach Jake Diebler a battlefield promotion to the vacated seat. Now, on a Sunday afternoon, the Buckeyes were blitzing the Boilermakers, and Diebler had precious little time to meet with his team to plan out how to finish things out.
That would all have to wait, though. During a first-half stoppage, Ohio State publicly welcomed back the 1998-99 team whose Final Four appearance has been vacated due to NCAA sanctions. Shortly thereafter, the group was privately ushered to the hallway leading to the locker room just before the close of the first half.
It was here that Diebler shook Biancardi’s hand. And Scoonie Penn’s hand. And the hands of every other former player, coach and staff member, sharing a quick exchange with each of them before making his way to his current team.
To Biancardi, the former Ohio State assistant coach and now ESPN’s director of recruiting, it was a gesture that said a lot.
“I know as a coach you really don’t want to see anybody or talk to anybody when you’re walking from the court to your locker room at halftime when you have a big game,” he said. “And Jake Diebler and his staff took two minutes out of their way to say hello to every one of the former players and ourselves, which I thought was incredibly classy to do at that moment of halftime of the Purdue game.
“He was able to switch gears and just say hello and thank the former players.”
In that regard, Biancardi has something in common with much of the coaching industry, especially those with ties to Ohio. Nationally, Diebler might be in the early stages of building his name as he enters his first year as Ohio State’s coach, but certainly within the Buckeye state there aren’t many coaches who don’t have a longstanding, often deep, connection with him.
Nowhere was that more evident than during Ohio State’s team camp, which hosted several dozen high school teams in early June. The two-day event had a heavy Central Ohio lean, and as Diebler made his way throughout the Schottenstein Center he couldn’t go far without being drawn into a conversation with another coach who’s crossed paths with him at some point.
Toledo St. John’s coach Mike Schoen knows Diebler particularly well. A fellow Northwest Ohio native, Schoen first crossed paths with Diebler when they were playing in elementary school rec leagues. As they grew older, he became teammates with Diebler to play in 3-on-3 Gus Macker basketball tournaments throughout middle school and friends with him off the court.
“I remember, we’d go play an intense, 3-on-3 Gus Macker weekend and then we’d go stay the night at his house and by the time we’d woken up Jake had already left for cross country practice and came back after running a couple miles,” Schoen said. “He was always a little bigger than everyone back then, but he was just tougher than nails. He just took our 3-on-3 group to a whole new level because he played every moment like he was playing in a state championship or a national championship.”
When Diebler got the full-time Ohio State job, Schoen said he sent his former teammate a congratulatory text to wish him good luck “without pestering him too much.” The time period immediately after being named Holtmann’s full-time replacement was a whirlwind for Diebler, who had to build a coaching staff, recruit his own players to stay and scour the transfer portal for new ones while also taking on the full responsibility of running the program.
New Albany coach Tim Casey, who also spent 22 years at Upper Arlington, said he felt close enough to Diebler to reach out and pitch one of his players, Braylen Nash, as a walk-on. Casey said he first met the Dieblers when his teams would play in camps alongside Upper Sandusky, which was coached by Keith Diebler, Jake’s dad.
“He’s one of those guys when you meet him, when you talk to him, he’s so personable you feel like you’ve known him forever,” Casey said of Jake Diebler. “You just feel like when you talk to him you get his attention.”
Some of Jake Diebler’s relationships were built from his days playing for his father, who has now retired after career that featured stops at eight Ohio schools across six decades. Others were forged as he got into coaching and solidified as he became Ohio State’s lead recruiter under Holtmann.
On July 1, Dorian Jones, a rising senior at Richmond Heights, Ohio, committed to the Buckeyes during a ceremony held in the atrium just outside of the school’s gym. Diebler had been recruiting Jones for years, but when the coach played AAU basketball for All-Ohio Red, Jones’ coach, Quentin Rogers was part of the coaching staff during Diebler’s sophomore year.
Northland coach Tihon Johnson first met Diebler while playing against his brother, Jon, at Ohio State’s summer open gym sessions. While he was on campus, Johnson said he would see Jake Diebler, then the video coordinator for the Buckeyes, working out former players while establishing himself as the designated…
The Columbus Dispatch
