After finally banking a healthy season in 2025-26, Taison Chatman will try to tap into his full potential at a new school.
The Ohio State guard, a rising redshirt junior, announced Sunday that he will enter the transfer portal after three years with the Buckeyes.
BREAKING: Ohio State guard Taison Chatman will enter the transfer portal, he tells VFTSP.
— Views From The Schott Podcast (@TheSchottPod) April 5, 2026
He averaged 4.3 PPG while shooting 46% from the field and 47% from behind the arc.
Chatman scored 10+ points five times for OSU over his final 14 games. pic.twitter.com/2JVSWtZLCM
Chatman came to Columbus as the highest-rated prospect of a touted Ohio State 2023 recruiting class, ranked as the nation's No. 39 overall recruit and No. 8 combo guard by the 247Sports composite. Injuries prevented him from gaining much traction in the first two years of his career, however.
Chatman played in just 17 games and averaged a mere 4.2 minutes per contest as a freshman, dealing with nagging lower-body injuries throughout the 2023-24 season. Then, in the summer before the 2024-25 campaign, he tore his ACL and had to miss the entire year, taking a medical redshirt.
Finally healthy for most of his redshirt sophomore year, Chatman averaged 4.3 points and 0.8 assists in 13 minutes per game this past season, overtaking fellow redshirt sophomore Gabe Cupps as Ohio State's No. 3 guard behind starters Bruce Thornton and John Mobley Jr. Chatman shot 24-of-51 (47.1%) from 3-point range.
After averaging a mere 1.9 points per game in his first 14 contests in 2025-26, Chatman emerged with a string of three double-figure scoring outings in late-January and early-February. He posted 7.8 points per game off Ohio State's maligned bench in the final 12 games of the regular season. But his season came to a difficult end when he played 14 minutes and scored no points in the Buckeyes' Big Ten Tournament win over Iowa, missed the Big Ten tourney quarterfinals loss to Michigan with an injury and scored no points in six minutes in Ohio State's first-round NCAA Tournament loss to TCU.
With Chatman joining Cupps in the transfer portal, the Buckeyes’ need to add multiple guards in the transfer portal increases. Already hunting for a starting point guard to replace Thornton and pair with Mobley, assuming he stays in school after testing the NBA draft waters, Ohio State also now has a major need for a weapon off the bench to handle the rock and provide some offense. Mobley is now the only returning guard from last season’s roster who saw more than 32 minutes of total action in 2025-26.
Chatman is the fourth Buckeye to announce he’ll enter the transfer portal this offseason, joining Cupps, Devin Royal and Colin White. Amare Bynum and Mobley have announced their intentions to return to Ohio State, while the latter declared for the NBA draft but will maintain his eligibility if he remains in college.
