Anthony Ventura

The Big Ten regular season officially wrapped up on Sunday, and the whole conference is now in postseason mode as Michigan State gears up to defend their #1 seed in the conference tournament starting this upcoming Wednesday. With postseason mode a full go, the conference decided to give out their postseason awards, as well as announcing the All-Big Ten and All-Freshman teams. Some Buckeyes (Jae’Sean Tate and Kaleb Wesson) made those teams, but we will focus on the player (and coach) who won a postseason conference award.

Keita Bates-Diop, known lovingly to Buckeye fans as KBD, brought some hardware back to Columbus this year by bringing home the Big Ten Player of the Year award. He beat out other talented players, including the likes of Penn State’s Tony Carr, Michigan State’s Miles (cheater) Bridges, and Purdue’s Carsen Edwards. KBD led the team in points (19.2), rebounds (8.9), and blocks (1.7) per game. Though he had hit a bit of a rough patch in recent games, he bounced back a little in the season finale against Indiana and is hoping to carry the Buckeyes deep in the conference, as well as NCAA tournament. There is no doubt that the Buckeyes would not have had nearly the success they had this year had it not been for the tremendous breakout season from KBD.

But all the love does not go to KBD. Head coach Chris Holtmann deserves a considerable amount of credit himself. Holtmann is the new Big Ten Coach of the Year, and he was clearly the most deserving. After the departure of Thad Matta, AD Gene Smith brought Holtmann on a little closer to the season than many would have preferred. With a depleted roster due to transfers and a lack of recruiting,  many in the program and media expecting a complete rebuild. Holtmann energized the locker room and instead brought them within a game of the conference title. They will have the 2 seed in the upcoming conference tournament, which is a big boost from almost every preseason conference prediction, as shown in the tweet below from Eleven Warriors.

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

With all this success so early here at OSU, Holtmann is in the running, and is possibly even a frontrunner for National Coach of the Year. In addition to being in the running for that award, he will likely be a frontrunner for many future openings at other Power 5 conference basketball teams. He deserves all the credit and recognition he is getting and he is an outstanding coach, but I sincerely hope he stays at OSU until the day he retires from coaching, while bringing the OSU basketball program to the same level of success the football program has enjoyed.

KBD is even getting some recognition as a possible first round selection for the upcoming NBA draft. KBD has been an outstanding influence on the program, which will hopefully spurn other top recruits to come to OSU and help Holtmann bring the program to a high level of success. I hope he will be as big of a success in the NBA as he has been this year, and I hope the team’s fan love him like Buckeye fans love him, if that’s even possible.