COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The tweet helped Lori Holtmann sleep better the night of June 7, 2017. Chris Holtmann didn't really sleep at all.

See, Lori knew what an open head coaching job at Ohio State would mean for her husband. It would be real. But now, she thought it was over. Chris was having a change of heart.

There had been calls from other schools. Short conversations that coaches have to take because you don't want to burn bridges. Followed by shorter conversations between the Holtmanns because, well, it wasn't really worth discussing. They knew what fit their family, what fit Chris' coaching persona and his recruiting ties. Through three years as Butler's head coach, none of the calls that came through had moved the needle.

But the job in Columbus had officially opened two days earlier on a Monday.

Chris was on a golf course just outside of Detroit, playing in a charity Coaches Beat Cancer outing when word of Thad Matta's firing, resigning, mutual parting of ways with Ohio State -- however you want to label it -- started making its way around Oakland Hills Country Club. On his drive back to Indianapolis later that day, Chris heard his name mentioned on the radio as a potential candidate to replace Matta.

Lori isn't really on social media much, and generally tries to avoid being glued to her phone, but she received a couple of texts when the news broke, because those in the Holtmanns' small circle knew what a vacancy at Ohio State would mean for Chris. It would be real.

"I hope they don't call me," Chris recalled saying to Lori. "There was a part of me that was like, 'Don't make me make the decision.'"

The search firm reached out on behalf of OSU athletic director Gene Smith the next day, Tuesday. Holtmann needed more time. Smith moved on. He flew to Omaha, Nebraska, on Wednesday evening to meet with Creighton coach Greg McDermott. At some point Wednesday afternoon, Holtmann had it in his mind that he was staying at Butler. So he tweeted:

"Team #120 arrives in 2 weeks!An important summer!."

It was accompanied by a photo of Butler players gathered near their bench in Hinkle Fieldhouse, hands raised in the air as they prepared to break the huddle.

"I thought it was done Wednesday night," Lori said. "I went to bed pretty at peace Wednesday night thinking we had made a decision that we felt good about, but was still hard."

That was actually just the midway point of what ended up being a whirlwind 48 hours.

Chris accepted the Ohio State job a year ago today -- June 8, 2017 -- following a face-to-face meeting with Smith in Dayton. The timing of the June change, the subsequent scramble to figure out the Buckeyes' roster situation, the family's move from Indianapolis and, you know, coaching, made it difficult for the Holtmanns to reflect on the entire situation during the season.

Cleveland.com sat down with them this week to get an inside look at the move 365 days later, and reflect on their first year at Ohio State.

*****

Holtmann made one of the strangest moves a coach can make in July of 2013 when he left his head coaching job at Gardner-Webb for an assistant job at Butler. Call it a move born from a constant need to be challenged.

There was a time when he was resigned to being the coach-in-waiting at his alma mater, Taylor University -- a small Christian school in Upland, Indiana, that competes in the NAIA. He played there for Paul Patterson, then worked as an assistant coach under Patterson for five years.

"I think the core of who I am as coach comes from him," Holtmann said.

So for a while he was content being on a path to one day replace Patterson. That changed when Holtmann got the urge to coach at a higher level, recruit a higher caliber of player, play in a higher-stakes game. Assistant coaching jobs at Gardner-Webb and then Ohio got him on the Division I level. He then got a lucky break when Gardner-Webb hired a low-major assistant from the MAC to be its head coach in 2010.

Holtmann inherited an eight-win team that summer. Had it at 21 wins and a second-place Big South finish by year three. The next summer Brandon Miller replaced Holtmann's close friend Brad Stevens as head coach at Butler. Miller called to see if Holtmann would be interested in joining his staff. Stevens and Holtmann had talked about a potential assistant job a few years earlier, but it didn't work out.

Here was the opportunity again. A chance to coach at a higher level with Butler moving to the Big East, recruit a higher caliber of player, play in a higher-stakes game -- even if it meant a demotion.

"I felt like at that time Gardner Webb was in a good place, and (Butler's) move to the Big East, I was excited about that," Holtmann said. "It was gonna be hard to be an assistant, but I was anxious to help Brandon. And I thought it would be a quicker path to a better head coaching job."

Holtmann had ambition, like any young coach, but he didn't get into this with a defined end game. There was a time Taylor felt like the end game.

When Miller took an unexpected leave of absence in October 2014, Holtmann took over the Butler program on an interim basis. He had the job permanently by that January. Then Butler felt like the end game.

That's probably what made things so surreal a year ago when Chris and Lori had their Toyota Sequoia pointed east on I-70 toward Dayton and a meeting with Gene Smith.

*****

Smith's true motivation for flying to Omaha will never be known. Was it legitimate interest in McDermott? Was it a ruse to put some pressure on Holtmann? Don't expect Smith to ever admit the truth. Holtmann was Smith's first choice. That much is clear. But Holtmann's initial hesitation to leave Butler put Smith, who promised a speedy coaching search, in a bind. He couldn't wait.

Late that Wednesday night, Holtmann's agent Jason Belzer got word to Smith that Holtmann had more interest in the job and wanted to meet. Eddie Fogler -- the former head coach at Wichita State, Vanderbilt and South Carolina whose consulting firm aided Smith in the search -- contacted Belzer early Thursday morning.

Smith wanted to move fast. Let's set up a meeting. Holtmann said his phone buzzed at 5:30 a.m. as the sides figured out how to set up a face-to-face.

The problem is that Smith's flight to Omaha was easily tracked. The meeting with Holtmann had to be a little more covert.

Belzer pulled up a map of Ohio and Indiana and sought out a midway point. He settled on the Holiday Inn Express in Brookville, Ohio. Just off I-70, it was a straight shot 96 miles east from Indianapolis, and 80 miles west from Columbus. Take Exit 21. Pass the McDonald's, Wendy's, Taco Bell, Arby's and Speedway gas station and it's on your right. Can't miss it.

Walk past the check-in desk, take a left and the conference room is on the right.

"I'm walking in there paranoid that someone is going to recognize me, the Butler coach in Dayton, Ohio," Holtmann says now, realizing how silly his paranoia was. But back then, discretion was important for both sides.

The conference room has sparse, neutral, tan walls because somewhere it says hotel meeting rooms must provide the most antiseptic environment possible. There's a rectangular table with seating for six. It smells like smoke in that way most cheap hotels smell like smoke because someone lit a cigarette in the room 10 years ago and the smell never fully went away. It was hot, too.

"Maybe it wasn't hot in there. Maybe we were just hot," Lori said.

She was nervous. Remember, she went to bed the night before thinking they were staying at Butler. She went to the gym Thursday morning, finished her workout and saw she had four missed calls from Chris. They had to meet with Gene Smith in Ohio. Then it was a race to find someone to watch their daughter, Nora, and then a futile search through her closet for something red. A lot of Butler blue. But no red.

Lori had always been in the loop for Chris' other job changes, but never this intimately involved. That's how she knew this was different. The request from the search firm was that Lori join Chris for the meeting in Dayton, where Gene would be waiting with his wife, Sheila.

They weren't there to talk terms. The terms were pretty well settled. Eight-year deal, which matched the eight-year extension Holtmann had just signed at Butler, and a pay bump for Holtmann up to about $3 million per year.

During a 90-minute sit-down, Smith mostly talked of the task at hand. The roster situation, the schedule, how it would take a rebuild to get Ohio State back on track after some down recruiting years. Chris didn't have many questions. Everything happened so fast for Lori that she didn't have time to formulate any.

They both got in the car knowing the likely outcome of the meeting. You can say no on the phone. You meet in person to say yes. But still, there were nerves. These were strangers meeting for the first time and one side was making a major life decision.

"Sheila was great because I think she realized it was emotional," Chris said. "It's hard sometimes because you're at such a great place like Ohio State, and if you haven't been to Butler maybe it's hard to understand where the emotional pull comes from. But there was one, and it was a strong one. You were dealing with how real do you want be with the emotions I'm going through right now, with (Lori) in particular. The emotions came a little bit later for me."

*****

One of the things Lori loves most about Chris is that he keeps his emotions in check.

"He's never too high and never too low, which I appreciate about him a lot," she said. "I think that has contributed to his success with his players and his staff. It's real. Always been that way."

But it can be frustrating at times when she'd like to see him let loose and celebrate a little bit.

When the Buckeyes got some good recruiting news earlier this year, Lori wanted to commemorate it. Chris thought a high-five would do. When Ohio State upset then-No. 1 Michigan State in January, Lori popped a bottle of champagne at home, one left over from a New Year's Eve celebration a few days prior. She wrote the date on the cork, and has it saved in their kitchen. Chris didn't finish his glass.

If that sounds like an overreaction to one January win, Ohio State fans will tell you how unlikely such a scenario looked at the outset of the season.

Holtmann left a team that was coming off a Sweet 16 trip, that had a good core of players back and one of the strongest on-paper recruiting classes Butler has ever had. At Ohio State he inherited a roster in flux, one that was ravaged by transfers before he got there and that lost two more players shortly after he took the job.

We won't re-hash Ohio State's unexpected success. Just know that it had a profound impact on the Holtmanns' personal transition to Columbus.

The decision to leave Butler was, not surprisingly, met with a lot of vitriol. Holtmann was accused of chasing money, of abandoning his team. Some of it more malicious. Holtmann for a time kept a file of the comments tweeted @ChrisHoltmann on his phone. He didn't have a good answer for why.

"I don't know. Maybe I'm a masochist or something," he said. "I haven't gone back and looked at them."

It came to a head in Portland in November when, of course, the PK80 Invitational shook out in a way that pitted Ohio State against Butler.

"It tore the scab off," Lori said.

But there was a sense that the team came together in Portland despite losing two of three games there, one in blowout fashion to Gonzaga and the other a late collapse against Butler that ended in overtime. When a run of 13 wins in 14 games started in December, including that win over Michigan State on Jan. 7, Lori knew it was going to be a special season. Pop the champagne.

Chris is fearful to get caught up in such things.

He's a worker. Something ingrained in him from a young age when -- growing up Nicholasville, Kentucky -- Holtmann had a paper route in the morning and helped his father clean office buildings at night. There's always more work to do. Taking time to celebrate milestones within the season is time lost.

"Maybe it's a paranoia I have," he said. "But I feel like if I do that too much, some (other coach) is in his office making recruiting calls."

Holtmann is a creature of habit. His wardrobe doesn't vary much. Ohio State shirt, a pair of jeans and Nike shoes when he's not on the court for practice or wearing his gameday suit. He falls into the pattern of eating the same sandwich from Subway for weeks in a row. Right now it's a spinach wrap with rotisserie chicken.

In the off-season he sprinkles in some running, some podcasts and tries to read more. Right now he's reading a book about President Jimmy Carter. He tends to lean toward media that centers on leadership and professional development. He's entertained the idea of starting his own podcast, but "too many other things to do right now."

In his first years as a head coach at Gardner-Webb, Holtmann used to bring his staff together in the summers to watch every game from the season before. Some of them sat on the floor of his small office as they broke down every play.

"That seemed like a sentence for my staff," he said. So he doesn't do it anymore.

He'll watch a handful of games on his own. The close ones. So technically Michigan State may not qualify. That was kind of a blowout. Bet he'll watch that one-point win over then-No. 3 Purdue from February, though. Maybe that's his way of celebrating. It sure as heck isn't popping champagne mid-season. Not his style.

Last June, the mood in car ride back to Indianapolis was far from celebratory.

*****

Holtmann didn't give Gene Smith an answer in the room. It was understood that they basically had an agreement, but Holtmann had calls to make. One was to his athletic director, Barry Collier. He also called John Groce, his teammate and roommate at Taylor, a former Ohio State assistant and now the head coach at Akron.

Lori was texting family and friends, anyone in the small circle, to let them know where things were trending.

They were happy. Don't get that wrong. By the following week they began to get settled. Chris lived in the Blackwell hotel on campus for two months while Lori house hunted. By the end of July they had a new home in Upper Arlington.

But as their SUV headed west on I-70 back to Indianapolis following the meeting, the mood was a bit unsettled, because they knew what they were driving toward.

"It was a different feeling going back just because of what was staring at you," Holtmann said.

This is where Lori starts crying, because even now she still feels the dread she felt then knowing they had to leave that Butler team behind.

Understand that it was about more than basketball. Emerson Kampen, an analyst on Holtmann's staff, lost a six-month old son in February 2016. A month earlier, the Butler family lost former player Andrew Smith after a two-year battle with cancer. Forward Joey Brunk lost his father to cancer two months before Holtmann took the Ohio State job. Through grieving together, Holtmann's Butler team very much felt like a family.

"I just kept thinking about our team, and how hard that was gonna be for him," Lori said. "He's had those conversations before, but this one felt particularly hard because of the things we went through with those people."

That's what made the 48 hours feel like such a blur. When he was first approached about the job on that Tuesday after Matta was fired, Holtmann couldn't make up his mind. He wished he had more time. But Smith didn't have much to give. He needed a fast answer.

"It was all about our team coming back at Butler," Holtmann said. "We had put a couple of recruiting classes together, we just went to the Sweet 16, we felt like there was really positive momentum, we loved Indianapolis, Butler had been incredibly good to our family. It was a 10 out of 10 on a scale of happiness."

Takes a lot to be willing to give that up.

Holtmann gave Smith his answer Thursday night. Smith wanted a press conference on Friday, a tidy wrap to what was effectively a one-week coaching search. Instead they simply announced the hire on Friday with a introductory news conference set for the following Monday.

More time for the Holtmanns to think over the change, and for Chris to process what he had signed up for. He didn't yet know that he was about to embark upon the most remarkable season of his coaching career.

"That was really a gift," Lori said. "To have the players we had, to have them really invest on the court, and in our families, that was a huge blessing."