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GREENVILLE, SOUTH CAROLINA - MARCH 18: Head coach Jake Diebler of the Ohio State Buckeyes looks on during practice at Bon Secours Wellness Arena on March 18, 2026 in Greenville, South Carolina. (Photo by Jacob Kupferman/Getty Images) | Getty Images
As Ohio State ran five-on-five drills Thursday afternoon at the Schottenstein Center, head coach Jake Diebler was not shy about pausing the action to reinforce certain habits. With limited practice time allowed during the summer by the NCAA, Diebler and his coaching staff were trying to make the most of an afternoon practice on the main floor at the Schott.
During this drill, half the Buckeyes wore green practice jerseys, and the other half wore red. Curtis Givens, a guard who transferred to Ohio State from Memphis in April, donned a green jersey. The 6-foot-3 newcomer began to initiate the offense for the green team, with Diebler standing a few feet behind him.
Freshman Anthony Thompson set a screen for Givens to his right, but the junior denied the screen and moved to his left, allowing his defender to easily slide over and continue to guard him. Whatever idea Givens had did not work in this instance, so he backed up to re-assess the floor. A few seconds had ticked off the shot clock, but the green team still had plenty of time to work with. It didn’t matter to Diebler. As soon as Givens backed off the screen and continued to dribble, the head coach blew his whistle and stopped the drill. Givens picked up the ball.
“Where are you going?” Diebler asked. “You’re dribbling into nothing. You’re just dribbling to dribble. Move with a purpose. Make a point-five decision. We’re making point-five decisions, don’t just dribble into nothing.”
Despite putting together pretty efficient offenses since being hired — Ohio State has finished top-40 in KenPom’s offensive efficiency ratings all three of Diebler’s seasons, including finishing 17th nationally last season — Buckeye fans have nagged for nearly a decade that the team’s offense “sticks” way too much. The ball doesn’t move quickly and crisply, and too often offensive possessions finish with one player possessing the ball and having to make an individual play to score.
Fortunately, Ohio State has been blessed with some very talented offensive players in the past decade who were capable of putting things on their shoulders and scoring, even when possessions got sloppy — Bruce Thornton, E.J. Liddell, Malaki Branham, and Keita Bates-Diop, to name a few.
Diebler, to his credit, is trying to make Ohio State’s offense less stagnant and individualized this season, and much crisper. The phrase “point-five decision” was thrown around like Halloween candy on Thursday afternoon, and on more than one occasion he completely shut down a drill to remind his players that it was their responsibility to make a “point-five decision.”
After practice, Diebler elaborated on what that means, and why he and the coaching staff are trying to pound the idea home to the players during the dogged summer months.
“We’re trying to speed up our decision-making process and not hold the ball, let the ball stick, go nowhere with the dribble,” Diebler said. “So the ball’s swung, we’re telling them to make a point-five decision. That’s a half (of) a second decision. It takes time to develop that, but that’s why we’re driving that home so much.”
Ideally, Ohio State wants as many offensive possessions as possible where their opponent is switching, scrambling, and closing out late — struggling to react to what the Buckeyes are doing. The longer one player holds the ball, the more time a defense has to settle and get themselves into a set defense. By that time, Diebler feels like Ohio State has blown the advantage they could’ve had if they continued to move the ball.
“Once you get them in a rotation, get them in a long closeout, now you’re getting a second paint touch, getting to the rim for a finish, or creating that drive and kick (opportunity),” Diebler said. He went on, “We’re trying to keep that ball movement, keep that defense in rotation and keep our advantage once we create it, and (even) use that to create an advantage sometimes.”
Diebler has long wanted to speed up Ohio State’s offense, but even with his teams playing fairly efficient offense, the tempo has never seemed to get anywhere close to where the young coach has hoped it would get. He’s spoken at length about not wanting to have to coach against “set defenses” in the Big Ten, and thinks his team’s best chance to score at a high clip is to do it fast and do it before other teams can settle into the sets they want to run.
Way back in the fall of 2024, before he began his first season as the full-time head coach, Diebler spoke with Land-Grant Holy Land about the tempo he wanted to play at, and how it would hopefully prevent teams from settling into their defense.
“Call it respect to the coaches in the Big Ten, but I just don’t really want to go up against a set defense over and over and over again,” Diebler said on Land-Grant’s Bucketheads Podcast in September 2024.
“Our intent with the pace that we’re playing at is to get the defense on their heels as quickly as possible. And if we can create an advantage early in the clock, we want to take that advantage. If we can create a mismatch early in the clock with our pace, we want to maintain that mismatch.”
Diebler credits new assistant coach Mike Wells, who spent over 20 years in the NBA as an assistant coach, with the new “0.5 decision” concept. One of the reasons Diebler hired Wells was to diversify the experience he had on his staff, and Wells, who won an NBA Championship with the San Antonio Spurs in 2007, is helping mold the offense into something closer to what Diebler envisioned two years ago.
After reminding Givens to be more expedient with his decision making, the head coach bounced the ball back to his guard, blew the whistle again, and practice resumed. Givens hit Thompson with a quick chest pass, in under one second.
Under one-half of a second, really.
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