The Buckeyes have added three players and made a noteworthy change to the 2025-2026 schedule.
The college basketball offseason is starting to slow down a bit, as high-major teams are putting the finishing touches on their roster as their allotted NIL budgets begin to dwindle. Ohio State is included in that, as Jake Diebler and his staff are nearly – but not completely – done adding to the 2025-2026 roster.
The Buckeyes are expected to add one more player to the team via the transfer portal this summer, and it will likely be someone who can play shooting guard or small forward and can provide some perimeter shooting to the team (think the Jamison Battle/Micah Parrish role). Former Southern Illinois guard Kennard Davis Jr. visited Ohio State last weekend, but is also considering DePaul, Ole Miss, Miami, and others.
Last week, Connor and Justin debated who Diebler should hire to replace outgoing assistant coach Talor Battle, who made a lateral move to join the Penn State coaching staff this spring. Battle was the least experienced on the Ohio State staff last year, and his main responsibility was pre-game video and scout prep. His salary was $300,000.
As does happen from time to time, the readers rebuked both Connor and Justin’s picks, with 43% of them saying that neither Seth Towns nor CJ Walker would be smart choices to replace Battle. 35% of readers agreed with Connor that Towns would be a good choice, while the remaining 22% liked Justin’s nomination of Walker.
After 200 weeks:
Connor- 89
Justin- 85
Other- 20
(There have been six ties)
As stated above, Ohio State isn’t done revamping its roster, and there’s still five months to go until the Buckeyes can even start practicing for next season. But to this point, here is how we feel about OSU’s offseason:
This week’s question: How would you grade Ohio State men’s basketball’s off-season?
Connor: C
Ohio State has made incremental improvements this spring – enough to (I think) push this team over the finish line and get them into the NCAA Tournament next season. Between Christoph Tilly and Brandon Noel, Diebler and his staff have added nearly 32 points per game of scoring, although it would be shocking if either of those players come close to their per-game stats from last year at Ohio State next season.
I’m expecting Noel to come off the bench for Ohio State, and if he can average 8-9 points per game that would be a success. Tilly is going to quickly learn that the Big Ten and the WCC are two very different levels of play, but I still think that if the big man can score close to 10 points per game as the starting center, that’s a success, too.
The frontcourt was a big weakness for Ohio State this year, and although they didn’t grab an elite player to reinforce it, they did hit a couple of “singles” that feel like pretty safe, high-floor additions.
Not to be overlooked, Ohio State also brought in former Indiana guard Gabe Cupps, who played at Centerville in high school. Maybe it’s because he committed to Ohio State so quickly, but the addition never made a ton of sense to me. Cupps will be competing with Bruce Thornton, John Mobley, and Taison Chatman for minutes at guard, and the redshirt sophomore only played in four games last year due to a meniscus injury.
Not that it’s not going to work out, I just didn’t think adding a non-scoring guard with an injury history was going to be one of Diebler’s first moves of the summer.
Ohio State also withdrew from the Battle 4 Atlantis for this fall – one of the biggest multi-team events of the season. I think this move is much to do about nothing, as the field had folded, and the remaining teams/replacement teams weren’t great. There weren’t going to be opportunities for great wins there, and there will be better opportunities elsewhere to also raise money for NIL. We’ll wait and see how the schedule pans out, but I don’t think Ohio State is losing any marquee games because of this.
Overall, Ohio State’s offseason is not worth standing up and applauding, but they definitely get a passing grade.
Justin: B
The important term to remember this offseason is retention. While the Buckeyes have only brought in three players as of now, they are returning over 44 points per game between Bruce Thornton, John Mobley Jr., and Devin Royal.
Thornton will be a top-five or top-10 point guard in the country, Mobley will be a popular candidate for the biggest freshman-to-sophomore jump in the conference, and Royal took a huge jump last season and is poised to take an even bigger one this year. These are a big three that you can build around, and you just have to put the correct pieces around them.
Last year, they did not, mainly in the frontcourt, where the production at times was literally nothing. To answer that, Sean Stewart will move to the bench where he can be more effective as the elite rebounder he is, while not getting in early foul trouble, and transfers Brandon Noel and Christoph Tilly will help with that lack of frontcourt production.
Instead of last year, where they went for young guys with high ceilings but are unproven (Bradshaw, Stewart), the coaching staff has so far brought in proven, experienced players. Noel and Tilly averaged 32 points and 13 rebounds last year.
It is a B for now, but if they bring in a starting caliber wing (Kennard Davis) to fill out the roster, it will be an A to me because every box was checked.