An offseason of development, an exhibition vs. Ohio and three games of regular-season action have provided plenty of intel about this year’s Ohio State basketball team.
The Buckeyes opened their campaign with a fast-paced 118-102 win over IU Indy, knocked down Purdue Fort Wayne 94-68 and overcame a 1-of-14 shooting start to launch a 42-10 run and eviscerate Appalachian State 75-53. Their offense looks a leap ahead of last year’s so far. But all the tougher tests of a long season lie ahead.
Notre Dame comes into Value City Arena on Sunday, the first of 25 power-conference games Ohio State tackles in Jake Diebler’s pivotal second season. The first three mid-major contests established starting lineups and rotations, though the starting five for the Buckeyes has been known since they rounded out their transfer portal class this offseason.
Regardless, there’s enough information now to take a detailed dive into where Ohio State stands at each position with its first major test upcoming. Ohio State’s brand of basketball under Diebler is one with plenty of positional flexibility. Thus, we’ll break this down into three main groupings: Guards, wings and forwards.
Guards
Ohio State could have the best backcourt tandem in the Big Ten if John Mobley Jr. takes the next step.
Bruce Thornton returned for his fourth year as a starter and became the first-ever four-time captain in Buckeye basketball history this season. His skill as one of the conference’s best guards is well established at this point. He picked up 17.7 points per game, seventh-most in the Big Ten, in 2024-25, adding 4.6 assists, which was eighth. He added a consistent perimeter threat to his game, going from 33.3% to 42.4% as a 3-point shooter. Thornton collected second-team All-Big Ten honors for those efforts.
Thornton’s senior campaign is off to a scorching start. He collected 26 points against IU Indy and a career-high 38 against Purdue Fort Wayne. Through three games, he’s averaging 25.7 points and four assists and shooting 70.6% from the field with a 56.3% mark from 3. Obviously, those numbers aren’t sustainable, but the Buckeyes’ brightest star could scoop up first-team All-Big Ten honors in his final year.
Mobley starts alongside him in the backcourt after a freshman season with highs and lows. Thrust into an unexpected starting role after Meechie Johnson Jr. played just 10 games, Mobley showed early why he earned the nickname “the Sniper” coming out of high school. He shot 53.6% from 3 in his first 11 contests and started picking up a few 20-point outings. The now-sophomore started playing some point guard to allow Thornton to create off the ball, too, a trend that’s continued into 2025-26.
But Mobley suffered some freshman lumps as the season continued. He shot just 11-of-42 (26.2%) from distance in Ohio State’s final six games. He made some bad turnovers, with an assist-to-turnover ratio of just 1.5 on the season. All told, he scored 13 points and dished out 2.2 assists per game, shooting 38.5% from behind the arc – but just 38.9% from the field overall. His effective field goal percentage (or eFG, which weighs 3s as 1.5 made shots for the extra point they give) was just 50.3%, sixth among Ohio State players with at least four field-goal attempts per game last year. Thornton led the squad in that stat at 58%.
“Physically, it was definitely a shock,” Mobley said in June of his first season. “Honestly, I never played a long season like that before. So just coming into next year, knowing what to expect, knowing what to do for my body, eating the right foods.”
Year one to year two often brings a huge leap for hoopers, and Mobley flashed clear talent in year one. He’s shot 40.6% from 3 but just 28.6% from 2 through three games this year, with an eFG of 48.6%. He’s gotten to the free-throw line, though, and converted 94.1% of his shots there to help him average 17 points per game. His assist numbers are up in a small sample size, five per game, against 2.7 turnovers for an assist-to-turnover ratio of 1.9.
If Mobley develops more consistency with his lethal 3-point shooting, adds a better game inside the arc and cuts back on turnovers, Ohio State’s starting backcourt can drive the team far.
Off the bench at guard, Indiana transfer Gabe Cupps has been the top option. The redshirt sophomore brings a spark, especially on the defensive end of the floor. He was smiling and clapping at hapless Appalachian State guards as he locked them down. The son of a long-time coach, he’s a heady distributor of the basketball and should be a dependable backup point guard who can knock down an open 3. Back from a season-ending injury with the Hoosiers four games into 2024-25, he’s picked up 10 points, four assists and four steals thus far this year.
“It really just comes down to what this team needs from me,” Cupps said after the Appalachian State win of his defensive energy. “We’ve got a lot of guys who can score. But I think I can be that guy who really gets up into people, and it’s hard for them to score on me if I set the tone at the top of the defense like that. But the smiling and stuff, that’s the joy (of playing). You take a step back, just to be playing basketball at Ohio State, it’s a great opportunity that I’m blessed with.”
Cupps has hit the court at the same time as Thornton and Mobley in a few three-guard lineups as well, for a change of pace.
Redshirt sophomore Taison Chatman is the fourth guard in Ohio State’s rotation, back from a season-ending injury himself in 2024-25. The composite top-40 prospect out of high school flashed in some practices open to the media and has gone 2-of-3 on 3-pointers in 27 total minutes of action thus far in the regular season, scoring eight total points with three assists. He's a bit of an unknown, an X-factor for the team.
Freshman guard Myles Herro’s first season in Columbus will be spent as a redshirt.
Wings
Junior Devin Royal is back after a starring role at power forward for Ohio State in 2024-25, a breakout sophomore campaign in which he averaged 13.7 points and 6.9 rebounds per game. That return is accompanied by a position change, however – he’s moved from power to small forward. He played on the wing some last season, but that’s now his full-time role.
As a result, Royal’s biggest offseason focus was 3-point shooting. He’s also slimmed down to guard the perimeter and add quickness for dribble-drive opportunities, while trying to hold onto the post game that’s brought him so much success in the past. The jury is still out, but early returns are good on the offensive end, with Royal shooting 4-of-7 (57.1%) to start the season from 3-point range.
Perimeter defense might be the biggest area of concern for Royal so far, but an acclimation period is expected during the transition to the position. Ohio State’s defense had issues as a whole vs. IU Indy and Purdue Fort Wayne, giving up 170 total points as the two squads shot 64.8% from the field. Royal sustained an injury and played just 17 minutes in the latter game, then was out vs. Appalachian State. His status for Sunday’s game against Notre Dame is unclear.
In his stead, Ohio State got a closer look at sophomore Colin White in his first career start at small forward against Applachian State. It might sound counterintuitive for a game where he scored zero points, but he was impressive. His hustle and defense were energizers for the Buckeyes and the home crowd, and he showed effort on the glass, picking up four rebounds. With White and Cupps seeing heavier playing time, Appalachian State managed just 53 points and shot 40.7%.
White is another player who had to recover from a season-ending injury he sustained 19 games into his first year.
“It’s been a rollercoaster of really, about, coming up on 12 months for him,” Diebler said after the Appalachian State game. “And I get to see the time he puts in every day to give himself a chance to even practice. Now, the exciting thing for us is, he’s been more consistent lately and had two great days of prep. So I felt like he earned the right to play well. For us, part of him representing the toughness and the winning over everything that we talk about every single day was part of why he started.”
White will remain Ohio State’s top backup small forward when Royal returns. Freshman Mathieu Grujicic, an international recruit born in France and raised in Germany who cut his teeth in the Spanish pro leagues, is still acclimating to the speed of the collegiate game. Whether he evolves into a contributor this year remains to be seen, but he has an interesting skill set for the future. He has three points in 12 minutes off the bench so far.
Forwards
With stars returning at positions 1 through 3, Ohio State’s season could hinge on the production it receives from its two transfer starters in the frontcourt: Power forward Brandon Noel (Wright State) and center Christoph Tilly (Santa Clara). Both are seniors.
Noel and Tilly put on a showcase in the Buckeyes’ exhibition game vs. Ohio, scoring 18 and 14 points. Tilly dished out an incredible seven assists for a 7-footer. Diebler swung and missed on a pair of unproven five-star prospects in the transfer portal for his frontcourt last season, Aaron Bradshaw and Sean Stewart. Noel and Tilly have produced a lot more through three games.
In those contests, Tilly has already registered 37.9% of Bradshaw’s total points and 220% of his total assists from last season, which was only 22 games for the Kentucky transfer after he missed a month while under university investigation that then required him to get back in game shape. Tilly has 16.7 points, 6.7 rebounds and 3.7 assists per game thus far. Diebler expects his 3-point shooting to improve from its 2-of-13 start, too; he looked more than capable in Ohio State’s open practices and shot 31.5% from 3 last year at Santa Clara.
“You got time and space, fire that thing,” Diebler said of his message to Tilly after he went 0-of-6 from deep vs. the Mountaineers. “It was important to me to keep encouraging him to shoot, because there won’t be too many times he shoots like that. We’ve tracked it all offseason.”
Tilly’s passing and ball-handling skills are a major boost to Ohio State’s offense, something entirely absent for the Buckeyes at the center position last season. Just look at the feed below.
That's good basketball.@ChristophTilly x @bnoel811
— Ohio State Hoops (@OhioStateHoops) October 26, 2025
B1G+ pic.twitter.com/KkcBreCDso
Tilly’s scoring looks good, too. Rebounding and defense remain points to prove against Big Ten competition, though, as he collected only 4.9 boards per game at Santa Clara last year. He’s had 6.7 rebounds per game thus far.
Noel, despite being four inches shorter than Tilly at 6-foot-8, was a more efficient rebounder last campaign, picking up 9.1 rebounds per 40 minutes to Tilly’s 8.7. He flexed that glass work alongside his scoring vs. Appalachian State, recording his 30th career double-double with 17 points and 11 boards.
“I’m more happy about the rebounds, honestly,” Noel said afterward. “Getting on the glass is something I’ve done my whole career. That’s really important to me. So, when I made the transition up here, I wanted to continue to be on the glass. Offensively, defensively, that’s how I can help this team win, so that’s something I’m going to continue to do. The points – the points will come.”
The points should come based on his production at Wright State. An adept three-level scorer, Noel averaged 19 points per game for the Raiders in 2024-25. At 9.7 points per game thus far in his Ohio State career, if he continues exceeding Stewart’s scoring production (5.7 points per game in 2024-25) while matching what he did in the rebounding department, that’s two-for-two on upgrades down low for the Buckeyes. Well, Stewart played center most of the year, but only out of necessity as a 6-foot-9 player with Bradshaw’s contributions being so thin.
Freshman power forward Amare Bynum is one of Ohio State’s most intriguing bench players, and he’s already up to seventh-man, behind sixth-man Cupps, in Ohio State’s rotation based on minutes. He’s seen a spot of work as a small-ball center, too, in a lineup or two with Royal playing the 4. The composite No. 61 prospect in the recruiting class of 2025, Bynum’s athletic profile and skill set are impressive for a 6-foot-8 player. He’s got dribble-drive. He’s got a post game. He can shoot. He can jump out of the building.
Amare Bynum hammers home the @OhioStateHoops alley-oop
— Big Ten Men's Basketball (@B1GMBBall) November 3, 2025
Subscribe/watch on B1G+ https://t.co/jEZE5LkUXC pic.twitter.com/vhTjKUrFh0
While still raw, especially as a rebounder and defender, Bynum is averaging 7.7 points and shooting 2-of-6 (33.3%) from 3 in just 14 minutes per game. That time should increase if the production stays at that level. He’s tied for fourth on the team with Mobley in points per 40 minutes (21.9).
Baylor transfer center Josh Ojianwuna is a rebounding and defense specialist with efficiency when he shoots down low (77.4% field goals, 7.4 points per game in 2024-25), with a significant role to play when he returns from a torn ACL he suffered in February. If he returns, that is. It would be post-Christmas at the earliest. For now, 7-foot-1 Croatian sophomore Ivan Njegovan is Tilly’s backup.
Njegovan looked like an off-path hiker without a map during the opportunities he received as a freshman, but signs of growth are already appearing in his second season. He hit a post spin into a baby hook shot vs. the Mountaineers, moves that didn’t show up in his 2024-25 performances. He’s quietly contributed well in his 10 minutes per game, averaging three rebounds and two points per contest with some solid interior defensive moments. That’s 12 rebounds per 40 minutes, by the way, which trails only Noel’s 12.8 per 40 on the team so far.
What it looks like in Big Ten play will be key. Njegovan needs to take some minutes off of Tilly’s legs, since small-ball lineups with Bynum or Noel playing center will have obvious drawbacks against some of the conference’s more physical frontcourts. That quartet, plus perhaps some power forward contributions from Royal, is all Ohio State has in the post until Ojianwuna is ready. If he’s ready this year.
Overall Outlook
Despite how poorly it closed the season, Ohio State barely missed the NCAA Tournament in 2024-25. With the production of its frontcourt, this team has already shown that, at least on paper, it’s better than last year’s. But it will all be about how it looks against Big Ten competition down the line. No one reading this needs to be reminded of what the past several Januaries and Februaries have looked like for this program.
Offensive skill is clearly there. Defense and rebounding, less certain. The Buckeyes at least have more size, going from a 6-6 power forward and a 6-9 center to 6-8 and 7-0 at those positions this season with Noel and Tilly. Bench production will also be key, something Ohio State sorely missed down the stretch last year. It averaged a meager 10.9 points from its bench from Jan. 1 onward, which would have been 351st nationally if it were for the full season. On the year, OSU scored 17.3 bench points per game, which was 253rd.
With four upperclassmen and a seasoned sophomore populating the starting lineup and interesting bench options, it’s NCAA Tournament or bust for Ohio State. Diebler’s goals lie further beyond that, but the Buckeyes’ first Big Dance in four years would inspire some confidence that he can lead the program long-term.
