The Buckeyes open up the Jake Diebler era in Las Vegas and on national TV against the No. 19 Texas Longhorns.
Football is over, and it is officially basketball season!
Okay, football might still be going on and could be approaching the most important part of the season, but basketball is back, and now you can watch both teams.
The Ohio State Buckeyes men’s basketball team enters a new era, as interim head coach turned full-time head coach Jake Diebler and his newly constructed staff take over in their first season. Not only is it a new coaching staff, but the team is pretty brand new as well, as the Buckeyes will start four transfers alongside junior point guard Bruce Thornton.
Diebler took over as interim head coach last season after Chris Holtmann was fired on Valentine’s Day and went 8-3 in the last 11 games, including a win over then No. 2 Purdue, and earned an NIT selection for the Buckeyes. Ohio State beat Cornell and Virginia Tech in the NIT before falling to Georgia in the quarterfinals.
Diebler has injected life into the program, and multiple players and recruits have said his energy is infectious. Now, it is Diebler’s program, and he is tasked with taking the Buckeyes back to the NCAA tournament, which they missed the last two seasons. That is the 38 year-old first-time head coach’s main objective this season.
It is not going to be easy to start, as the Buckeyes head to Las Vegas to take on the No. 19 Texas Longhorns, a squad with a ton of talent that, like Ohio State, hit the transfer portal hard this summer to replace lost talent.
Preview
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The No. 19 Texas Longhorns come into this one with an incredibly talented roster. Rodney Terry’s team is a blend of talented returners from last season, experienced veterans from the portal, and a smidge of youth.
Five-star freshman Tre Johnson has one-and-done potential, and transfers like Tramon Mark of Arkansas, Julien Larry, and Jayson Kent of Indiana State, and Jordan Pope of Oregon State will have an immediate and substantial impact.
Pope and Kent were two players many people wanted to see the Buckeyes pursue in the transfer portal, and they will be key contributors to the Longhorns this year. Johnson also showed no signs of needing adjustment to the college game, scoring 31 in Texas’ exhibition against Colorado, which was an NCAA tournament team last season.
According to Texas athletics, The Longhorns have won 21 of their last 22 season openers and posted an overall mark of 98-20 in their previous 118 season-opening games. This marks UT’s first neutral-site season opener since 2015-16, when Texas faced Washington in Shanghai, China.
Texas is one of only eight programs nationally to advance to the NCAA Tournament Round of 32 in each of the last three years, joining Baylor, Creighton, Gonzaga, Houston, Kansas, Michigan State, and Tennessee.
The 2024-25 Texas roster includes six returning players from last season, meshing with six players from the transfer portal, along with four freshmen.
Ohio State is also heavily relying on transfers, as players like Roddy Gayle, Felix Okpara, and Scotty Middleton transferred out, while Sean Stewart, Aaron Bradshaw, Micah Parrish, and former Buckeye Meechie Johnson joined (or re-joined) the program.
The main questions for the Buckeyes entering this contest are:
- Where are they as a team?
- Have all the transfers meshed yet?
- How long it will take for the team to feel natural?
The Buckeyes do bring back starting point guard Bruce Thornton, and he will play a large role in helping all of the transfers mesh and play together.
Prediction
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I do think Texas will win this game, but it is not because I have too many questions about Ohio State. It’ more that I just really like this Texas team.
So much, in fact, that I have in them in my preseason Final Four. They have some chemistry work to do as well, but as long as Rodney Terry gets this team to mesh early, the Longhorn offense is going to be impossible to stop.
Match that up with Ohio State, which still has some early concerns on the defensive end, and I think this will be a scoring matchup that Texas wins in the end. But both teams are top-20 talents in the nation.
ESPN BPI: Texas 69.6%
Time: 10:00 p.m. ET
TV: TNT
LGHL score prediction: Texas 86, Ohio State 80