Barring any late surprises, the singing of Mathieu Grujicic earlier this month marked the final roster move for the Buckeyes in what has been another chaotic offseason. Since ending their 2024-25 season with an uninspiring loss to Iowa in the first round of the Big Ten tournament on March 12, head coach Jake Diebler and his staff have seen seven players depart the program due to either the transfer portal or graduation and another seven players join the team.
With another offseason of heavy roster reconstruction now likely in the books, Diebler spent some time with local media on June 18 to discuss in detail how he and his staff navigated through the spring months and retooled their team for the 2025-26 season. In what was his first public media availability since the Iowa loss, the Buckeyes’ coach said that the first order of business for he and his staff was to retain the core members of their roster from last year, most notably the productive trio of guards Bruce Thornton and John Mobley Jr. and junior forward Devin Royal.
“It started with retention,” Diebler said. “Retention was how we wanted to build out this roster. The foundation, the core, however you want to put it, was retention. Obviously, the three guys, Bruce, John and Devin, certainly highlight that. But we also wanted to retain guys like Taison (Chatman), Colin (White), and Ivan (Njegovan), guys who are developing in our program. That was important too. Once we had those kinds of pieces settled, we wanted to build out from there and complement those guys.”
From there, the Buckeyes looked outward and focused on adding talent through the transfer portal, where — unlike last year — they prioritized experience over high-risk, high-reward talent. This, according to the coach, was especially prevalent in the frontcourt, where they not only looked to add girth but also experience and intelligence.
“I felt like experience was important in the frontcourt, and increasing our size,” Diebler said. “We’re going to be bigger, at the three, four and five positions. That was important, because rebounding was an issue for us last year, so we wanted to address that. But we also wanted to raise our collective basketball IQ. I think the experience certainly plays a role in it, but those were things we were targeting, and I feel like we did really well with that.”
Perhaps the most clear example of that transfer portal strategy being put into action is the additions of veteran forwards/centers Christoph Tilly and Brandon Noel, who not only enter the program as physical big men but as elder statesmen in college basketball, having played a combined 183 games with 149 starts in their first three seasons. Diebler thinks that the two rising seniors possess a unique combination of skill and basketball intelligence that should immediately make the team better.
“Both of those guys have played a lot of college basketball, and I get they didn’t play a lot of Big Ten basketball, but they’ve both been well coached,” Diebler said. “You could see on film an understanding, a basketball IQ, that I think will help the transition from their level to this level. …Combine that basketball IQ with their skill level –being able to not only make shots, but pass, make decisions, dribble — that combination is going to help that transition for them. And we need them to be impactful.”
Regardless of skill level, Diebler said that his new additions are an especially great fit when considering their high character and competitiveness, which he said are two important pillars of the culture he is trying to create at Ohio State.
“We were really intentional about who we invited in, because as a program, we value chemistry. I think it impacts winning in a major way,” Diebler said. “So we wanted to get like- minded people here, guys who are ultra competitive — boom, you have that. Check that box. Then it was about — we got guys who want to be pros.
“So there’s like-minded guys in our locker room, but ultimately, we’re building a roster and a chemistry where Ohio State matters. That matters to me. We have a saying right now in our program, ‘winning over everything,’ and they’re reminded every time they work out of that. That’s a mentality for us that our guys have bought into so far. It won’t always be easy to keep that mentality, but we’re building a foundation for that. Chemistry is going to play a huge role.”
