He might hail from Georgia, but Bruce Thornton is the embodiment of a Buckeye.
In the age of constant college basketball roster turnover due to the combination of NIL and the transfer portal (revenue sharing forthcoming), Thornton has had ample opportunity to leave Ohio State. He would have been forgiven for seeking a bona fide contender after missing the NCAA Tournament with the Buckeyes for the third straight year, two of which he was their leading scorer.
But he stayed.
“I just stand by my morals,” Thornton said. “I just believe in staying true to people who did well by you. I’ve always been like that, since I was young. Staying with the same teams, staying with the same group of people, my friends from back home. I just stay the course. And I always reaped the benefits of staying loyal, and just put it in God’s hands.”
Thornton’s career accolades are great, but he came back for his final year with his one and only college team with one object in mind: winning games. Or as Thornton’s shirt read and the Buckeyes' new mantra goes, "Winning over everything."
“I’m just trying to win games,” Thornton said. “I don’t care what else I do.”
“I just believe in staying true to people who did well by you. I’ve always been like that.”– Bruce Thornton on returning to Ohio State
Yes, Thorton is going to be compensated on the NIL and revenue share side, but loyalty is a commodity in the modern-day NCAA hoops landscape. Thornton could have easily sought compensation elsewhere. But he instead showed his loyalty in abundance.
He’s also a two-time second-team All-Big Ten selection and will almost certainly become the first four-time team captain in Ohio State history as a senior. He’s 10th all-time with the Buckeyes in career assists at 408, and will climb to No. 3 all-time if he matches his output of 148 (4.6 per game) last year. His 1,487 points are 21st in school history.
Last year was the best yet for Thornton. He evolved into a potent 3-point shooter, knocking down 42.4% of his looks from outside to help register a career-high 17.7 points per game. His overall field goal percentage was a career-high 50.1% as well. His perimeter defense was stout, too, helping the Buckeyes finish 22nd nationally in opposing 3-point percentage (30.5%).
Those numbers came with a workload of 36.2 minutes per game, the third-most of any player in the Big Ten. With John Mobley Jr. back as Thornton’s backcourt co-star and depth in Gabe Cupps, Taison Chatman and Mathieu Grujicic, Diebler hopes he can provide his bigger star with fresher legs down the stretch of 2025-26.
“As the season went on last year, we tried to move Bruce around in the half court because he was so efficient as a scorer,” Diebler said. “But it was a heavy load that we asked him to carry last year and being able to have guys create for him sometimes makes it easier for him and also made us harder to guard. So we feel like we have way more playmaking in general, which will be really helpful for us. There's going to be a lot more space on the court, which is something we tried to do going into last season, but as the season wore on, we just weren't able to do that at the level we wanted to.”
Last year was the closest Thornton and the Buckeyes have come to a return to the tourney in the past three seasons.
Ohio State entered the final month of its schedule well within the projected 68-team field, then lost five of its last seven games, including an immediate exit from the Big Ten Tournament against Iowa. Even if the Buckeyes had beaten Indiana in their final regular-season game, they would have collected a first-round bye in the conference tourney and likely made the Big Dance.
That’s why Thornton said the littlest details, from free-throw shooting to defensive communication to team chemistry, matter.
“It’s a margin of one possession; we would have been in the tournament,” Thornton said. “So I make sure I hold these guys to a high standard, make sure we do all the small details because it matters. You might not see it then, but it can come back to haunt you at the end of the season or at the end of the game.”
With Cupps transferring in from Indiana, Chatman returning from a season lost due to injury and Grujicic coming from overseas, Thornton’s backcourt support will look entirely different than it did in 2024-25. There will be two new starters in the frontcourt too, with power forward Brandon Noel from Wright State and center Christoph Tilly from Santa Clara.
“We’re gonna fit together because there’s no egos,” Thornton said. “When you have no egos, it makes the job way easier. So we don’t care who scores, how we score, we just want the job to get done at the end of the day. Because if we’re all winning, everybody eats.”
Thornton is entering his fourth year as Ohio State’s maestro, captain and star. He feels better at it than ever before. There’d be no player more deserving of an end to the Buckeyes’ NCAA Tournament drought – his and the team’s journey gets underway in November.
“I just use everything I’ve been through,” Thornton said. “In college basketball, I’ve been at the dead bottom, been high up. So I’m just telling these guys, ‘It’s a roller coaster, yo. You’ve just gotta stay the course the whole time. Everything will take care of itself.’”
