BREAKING: A Buckeye assistant is hired by Chris Holtmann at DePaul.

Chris Holtmann, the former head coach of the Ohio State Buckeyes, won’t start his new job by himself.

Last Monday, the former head coach of the Buckeyes was appointed to take charge of the DePaul Blue Demons men’s basketball team. Adding former Ohio State assistant Jack Owens was one of his first moves as head coach.

Prior to working under Holtmann, Owens led the Miami RedHawks as head coach. After living in Oxford, Ohio for five seasons, Owens moved to the north to join Holtmann’s staff.

Owens and Jake Diebler were two of Holtmann’s most trusted bench players. In Columbus, Diebler was introduced as Holtmann’s replacement on Sunday morning, and he gave his first press conference yesterday.

Holtmann has experienced adjusting to a new school before. Before taking over at Ohio State, Holtmann was the head coach of the Butler Bulldogs.

Holtmann led the Bulldogs to victories in the NCAA Tournament in each of his three seasons in that position. Under Holtmann’s direction, the Butlers’ greatest run was to the Sweet Sixteen in 2017, when Kamar Baldwin and Kelan Martin were representing the Bulldogs.

During his first press conference, Holtmann informed DePaul beat reporters that he had been thinking about what went wrong at Ohio State. He feels that adding more experience to the roster is one of the key changes he needs to make this time.

“One thing probably that I learned is (that’s you) gotta be a little bit older than we were,” Holtmann continued. “But even though we started four freshmen two years ago and four sophomores this past season, we made tremendous progress…But they were not the dependable teams from the previous five years in the NCAA Tournament.”