Chris Holtmann, one of the new guys, introduced himself Monday. He wore a sharp silvery-gray twill suit paired with a scarlet-and-gray-stripped tie. He looked the part of a powerbroker: The new head basketball coach at Ohio State.

And then he declared that he, Chris Holtmann, a coach with 1,108 fewer college wins than Tom Izzo and John Beilein combined, will lock down the state of Ohio from neighboring marauders. Holtmann said Ohio State will "close the borders and dominate the state of Ohio in recruiting."

This was a coach planting his flag. Holtmann was pried away from Butler with an eight-year contract worth roughly $25 million to resuscitate Ohio State hoops. In his introductory press conference, he did well to salute and lionize the man who came before him, OSU all-time wins leader Thad Matta, but made clear that he plans to flourish where Matta failed -- keeping Ohio talent in Ohio.

Holtmann says enough is enough.

So does Archie Miller. And Brad Underwood.

These are the new faces of the old Big Ten. Miller is at Indiana, the league's dormant juggernaut. Underwood is at Illinois, one of the league's basketball-centric unicorns. Holtmann is at Ohio State, a mammoth operation with championship expectations.

The three represent a splash of change across the conference canvas. The one thing they all have in common is the shared task of restoring glory. No one landed at his new school because a predecessor went on to bigger and better. All were hired to shift power back to traditional stalwarts. (Actually, the other trait they have in common is that they're all white, making the Big Ten the only high-major conference without a black coach. But that's a column for another day.)

The main areas of change will be, not coincidently, the two ultimate tools in college basketball: Recruiting and money.

Don't for a second think Michigan and Michigan State aren't up the road keeping a close eye on all this.

Miller, Underwood and Holtmann are all currently recruiting their 2018 classes. These players will be sophomores in each coach's crucial third year on the job. If you don't win in year three, you might not see year four.

Miller is surely aware of such expectations. He held his introductory press conference on March 27 beneath the five national championship banners at the Basilica of Assembly Hall. For the secular religion of Indiana basketball, recruiting is the highest sacrament.

Long seen as one of the brightest young coaches in college basketball, Archie Miller landed at Indiana in March.

Tom Crean, IU's former coach, recruited well, but not well enough. He also won, but didn't win enough. Hoosier fans, a mostly unhinged lot, expect Final Four berths and recruiting that melds a flawless mix of homebred talent and five-star McDonald All-Americans. During Crean's tenure, Michigan enjoyed shopping in Indiana, pulling Zak Irvin, Mitch McGary, Glenn Robinson III and Spike Albrecht off the shelves. So did Michigan State, collecting Gary Harris and Branden Dawson. Both programs will try to do the same with Miller manning the air traffic control center in Bloomington.

The question in the Big Ten, overall, is can Miller replicate his brother's recruiting? Sean Miller has done a remarkable job of shoehorning Arizona into Duke and Kentucky's annual two-team gold rush. If Archie Miller makes it a family affair, the landscape will shift.

Over the weekend, Indiana hosted East Lansing High School star Brandon Johns for a visit. The top-50 forward has forever been an MSU and U-M target. Brows were most definitely raised in Ann Arbor and East Lansing by the visit.

In Ohio, meanwhile, a rash of invasive species have ravaged local high school gyms in recent years. Duke grabbed Luke Kennard. Villanova snagged Omari Spellman. Louisville took V.J. King. Carlton Bragg went to Kansas. Esa Ahmad and Devin Williams went to West Virginia. Vincent Edwards went to Purdue.

Coming from the north, Beilein found Easter eggs sitting in plain sight: Trey Burke in Columbus and Caris LeVert in Pickerington. Next year's Wolverines and will include four Ohioans: Wright State transfer Jaaron Simmons (Dayton), Xavier Simpson (Lima), Ibi Watson (Pickerington) and Jon Teske (Medina). Izzo drove down I-75 South and grabbed Nick Ward from Gahanna, a mere 8 miles outside of Columbus, and plucked away Kyle Ahrens (Versailles) and Javon Bess (Gahanna). Before that came Travis Trice and Adreian Payne.

This, more than anything, has driven Ohio State fans to exasperation. In that regard, Holtmann was a commonsense hire. Hell, the 45-year-old grabbed a commitment last August from highly-touted 2017 forward Kyle Young, a Massillon native, a week before he was to visit Ohio State.

Among the grouping of Miller, Underwood and Holtmann, Underwood sticks out as a stealth bomber. No one is quite sure what to make of him. Three years at Stephen F. Austin. One year at Oklahoma State. No ties to the Midwest other than a 1992-2003 stint as an assistant at Western Illinois. At 53 years old, he's a foreigner in Chicago, the most anarchic recruiting territory in the country.

Who is this guy?

Well, for one, he's the coach who scored a commitment from 2017 point guard Mark Smith -- who Michigan State fiercely targeted -- in the 11th hour. He's also the guy who built a top-25 recruiting class in his lone year Oklahoma State. Now Underwood is leading Illinois, a program that can sneak up on everyone like a summer storm.

To recruit, though, one needs foot soldiers.

In a fine example of college basketball being a lawless parlor game, Underwood not only tabbed Orlando Antigua as an assistant coach, but also handed him a robust $375,000 salary -- a jarring number in college basketball circles. This is the same ex-Kentucky assistant who was fired as South Florida head coach amid academic fraud allegations; the same Orlando Antigua who had 13 players leave or be dismissed in 2 1/2 years as a head coach.

This brings us to the money. While Miller, Underwood and Holtmann all pocketed multi-million dollar contracts, as expected, it's their assistant coaches' payouts that will prove noteworthy.

Part of hiring a coach in 2017 includes providing a war chest of funds for a staff.

Antigua is now earning more money than any Michigan State assistant. That's a group, mind you, that stands as college basketball's longest-tenured intact staff among high-major programs. From 2014-2016, each MSU assistant (Dane Fife, Mike Garland and Dwayne Stephens) received raises ranging from 33 percent to upwards of 39 percent; but even with that, associate head coach Dwayne Stephens earned $287,000, while Fife and Garland both made $266,500.

That puts MSU's total salary pool for assistant coaches at $820,000.

At Ohio State, Holtmann was given a pool of $1.2 million for his three on-court assistants, according to the Indianapolis Star. Having gone to three straight NCAA Tournaments at Butler, Holtmann opted to bring his entire staff -- Terry Johnson, Ryan Pedon and Mike Schrage -- with him. The three will receive significant pay increases and likely divvy up that $1.2 million.

The staff at Indiana should also approach the $1 million mark in total compensation. Miller hired former longtime UMass and Drexel head coach Bruiser Flint for what's likely an Antigua-level deal, a contract well over $300,000. Same goes for former UCLA assistant Ed Schilling, who came to IU after earning over $250,000 annually in Westwood. Rounding out the staff is Tom Ostrom, Miller's former assistant at Dayton, who holds the title of associate head coach.

All told, Underwood was given an $850,000 budget allocation for three assistants, according to the terms of his deal. The figure was formulated before Antigua's hiring, though, and could very well have been raised. Underwood retained former John Groce assistant coach Jamall Walker, who surely earned a notable raise on the $190,000 he earned last year, and hired former UIC assistant Ron Coleman.

At Michigan, in the meantime, Beilein's staff earned a total base salary of $615,00 last season. Veteran assistant Jeff Meyer, along with first-year additions Billy Donlon and Saddi Washington, all made $205,000 apiece. Meyer's salary will rise to $220 next season, the final year in a four-year contract. Donlon and Washington are on year-to-year contracts. According to results from a recent FOIA request, those deals are yet to be formally restructured.

It's a wild time in the Big Ten when a slew of new assistants are suddenly earning more than old warhorses like Mike Garland and Jeff Meyer.

But this is what happens when power changes hands.

Are Beilein and Izzo scared of what's happening at Ohio State, Indiana and Illinois?

No, probably not.

But neither is naive. With the Buckeyes, Hoosiers and Illini being disproportionately unsteady the last few years, the Big Ten has existed in an oddly destabilized reality. Now there are winds of change. Michigan and Michigan State will see if they breathe some life into a few friendly enemies.