Analyzing Potential Strengths and Concerns For Ohio State’s 2025-26 Basketball Roster

The Buckeyes likely found their final contributor in German guard Mathieu Grujicic on Tuesday, who will try to provide immediate depth on the wing and in the backcourt while acclimating to college life alongside fellow freshmen A’mare Bynum and Myles Herro. They’ll join a quartet of transfer portal signees in center Christoph Tilly (Santa Clara), forwards Josh Ojianwuna (Baylor) and Brandon Noel (Wright State) and guard Gabe Cupps (Indiana).

One more roster addition is available for Ohio State to reach the 15-man limit, but finding someone impactful at this stage is improbable.

With a three-man returning core of stars in Bruce Thornton, John Mobley Jr. and Devin Royal, Diebler might only be entering year two of his young head coaching career, but he already faces a pivotal season for himself and his program’s future. Ohio State has missed three consecutive NCAA Tournaments. Attendance in Value City Arena remains at all-time lows, even if a lack of weekend home games is partially to blame.

Much of the Buckeyes’ success this season will hinge on their transfers panning out better than they did last season. Only one of Diebler’s five transfers in 2024-25, Micah Parrish, excelled in his role. Meechie Johnson Jr. played only 10 games, Aaron Bradshaw missed a lot of time and mostly struggled when active, Sean Stewart wasn’t an offensive force and couldn’t stay out of foul trouble and Ques Glover was thrust into a bigger role than expected, which caused him to struggle, too.

Bradshaw (Memphis), Stewart (Oregon) and Johnson (South Carolina) transferred to other schools while Parrish and Glover exhausted their eligibility. Alongisde better results out of the portal, development will also be key for Ohio State’s inexperienced depth pieces.

There are some reasons for optimism in the Buckeyes’ roster, too, however. There’s a lot of experience at the top of the depth chart, their guard play could be fantastic and they should be able to space the floor. We’re taking a look at the strengths and weaknesses of Diebler’s year two crew.

Ohio State Basketball Roster

NAME	CLASS	POS	HT	WT
A’MARE BYNUM	FR	F	6-8	225
TAISON CHATMAN	SO (RS)	G	6-4	175
GABE CUPPS	SO (RS)	G	6-2	180
MATHIEU GRUJICIC	FR	G	6-6	205
MYLES HERRO	FR	G	6-3	165
JOHN MOBLEY JR.	SO	G	6-1	175
IVAN NJEGOVAN	SO	C	7-1	250
BRANDON NOEL	SR	F	6-8	240
JOSH OJIANWUNA	JR	F/C	6-10	230
DEVIN ROYAL	JR	F	6-6	220
BRUCE THORNTON	SR	G	6-2	215
CHRISTOPH TILLY	SR	C	7-0	240
COLIN WHITE	SO	F	6-6	205

*Projected starters in bold

Potential Strengths

Backcourt

Basketball is a star-driven sport, and for the third year in a row, the Buckeyes’ biggest star will be a guard in Thornton. The leading scorer for Ohio State in 2023-24 (15.7 points per game) and 2024-25 (17.7 PPG), he’s also been the offense’s maestro, leading the team in assists both years. 

Most of Thornton’s production has come from the point guard position, but last season the Buckeyes began utilizing him at shooting guard in a lot of offensive sets during the second half of the campaign, allowing him to play off the ball while then-freshman John Mobley Jr. ran point.

Mobley, thrown into the fire last year, emerged as something of a star but saw inconsistencies in the second half of the season. He shot just 27.5% from 3 in Ohio State’s last seven games despite knocking down 38.5% of his downtown looks for the year. All told, Mobley collected 13 points and 2.2 assists per game. But if he takes another step in his development, the Buckeyes could have the best starting backcourt in the Big Ten as previously advertised when Meechie Johnson Jr. transferred in last offseason.

What’s unknown is the quality of depth behind Thornton and Mobley. There’s potential in all three players who could provide support, redshirt sophomores Taison Chatman and Gabe Cupps and freshman Mathieu Grujicic, with fellow freshman Myles Herro seen as a developmental piece.

Chatman and Cupps enter their third collegiate seasons in extremely similar spots. Both were highly-touted four-star prospects in the recruiting class of 2023, Cupps being named Ohio Mr. Basketball and landing in the top 100 of the 247Sports composite rankings, while Chatman cracked the top 40 to be Ohio State’s highest-rated signee that year. Both saw sparing use as freshmen, then suffered season-ending injuries that forced them to redshirt their sophomore years, Chatman in the summer and Cupps during Indiana’s fourth game of 2024-25.

Then there’s Grujicic, the German who arrives from Spain and factors into both the wing and backcourt rotations for the Buckeyes. His résumé in the fourth tier of Spanish pro ball and various youth leagues and camps is impressive, but whether it can translate immediately to the American college ranks is to be determined.

If one of Cupps, Chatman and Grujicic produces at guard off the bench, it will help solidify Ohio State’s rotations. If two of them pop, guard depth will be a strength for the squad. But the Buckeyes’ backcourt starters should be the basis of their efforts, regardless.

Skill

Thornton and Mobley both shot better than 38% from 3-point range last year. Noel brings a 37.3% career 3-point percentage to the power forward position. Even Royal jumped from 15% to 27.6% from his freshman to sophomore years, indicating he can offer some perimeter threat if he continues improving as he moves to the small forward position. 

Spacing the floor is one thing for Ohio State’s starting lineup, but it’s also the refinement of Tilly and Noel’s games around the rim that will offer the Buckeyes more skilled scorers this year than they had in 2024-25 if the pieces fall into place as planned. Its frontcourt (minus Royal) often suffered in that regard a year ago. Tilly’s tape shows more know-how scoring around the rim than Stewart or Bradshaw, and his stats (12.5 points per game, 61.7% shooting from 2-point range).

Noel is a versatile three-level scorer with great dribble-drive ability, some refined post moves and a deft touch around the rim. He collected a blistering 19 points per game and shot 55.2% from the field at Wright State.

There will be plenty of ball-handling and distribution abilities from the backcourt mentioned above as well. Thornton averages four assists to just 1.3 turnovers per game for his career.

Experience

Four of Ohio State’s five projected starters in 2025-26 will be upperclassmen. These are players who have seen a lot of college basketball action.

Last year, Diebler made it a point to bring in hoopers with significant NCAA Tournament experience. That won’t be the case this year, as only one player on Ohio State’s roster, Ojianwuna, has seen any Big Dance action. But where only one of the Buckeyes’ five starters (Thornton) for most of 2024-25 had a double-figure point-per-game season under his belt, all five projected starters have one in 2025-26.

Essentially, the Buckeyes traded NCAA Tournament experience for actual seniority and proven production. Thornton, Mobley, Royal, Noel and Tilly have a combined 300 games started in their careers. That’s nearly 10 regular seasons’ worth of starts.

Ojianwuna is another senior leader who will try to get back on the court. Cupps is known for a rugged leadership mentality, even if he hasn’t gotten a chance to flex it much yet. The most connected and often the most successful teams are player-led, and there are a lot of potential leaders complementing the soon-to-be four-time captain Thornton.

Concerns

Whether Transfers’ Games Will Translate

There’s no need to relitigate all the shortcomings of the past several years of portal hauls for Ohio State. But for every hit transfer former head coach Chris Holtmann found, he came up with multiple duds.

Every class, every player gets a chance to tell their own story. For both of the Buckeyes’ projected frontcourt starters, Noel and Tilly, that tale will involve a not-so-mid-major leap in competition. Both were efficient and productive at Wright State and Santa Clara, but the Horizon League and West Coast Conference aren’t the Big Ten.

Many touted transfers from mid-major schools flopped for Holtmann, including Noel’s former teammate Tanner Holden, who went from 20.1 points per game with the Raiders in 2021-22 to 3.6 with Ohio State in 2022-23. That has no direct bearing on Noel or Tilly’s success, and they’re all extremely different players, but the Buckeyes are depending on both to be Big Ten-caliber first-line forwards.

Cupps still has a lot to prove, as referenced above, while the main concern for Ojianwuna is health after his season came to an abrupt end at Baylor with a knee injury that required surgery. There’s still no timetable for his availability, but it’s not expected that he’ll play in the Buckeyes’ season opener. Speaking of which:

Interior Defense and Rebounding

For all the fire starters in their offensive survival kits, Tilly and Noel are going to need to burn very bright relative to the rest of their careers in the rebounding and defense categories.

These were major issues for the Buckeyes last season. They finished 277th nationally in rebounding. They were outrebounded by their opponents 34 to 33.7 boards per game, and it’s no coincidence that each team ahead of Ohio State in the final Big Ten standings didn’t, in fact, get outrebounded by the teams they faced.

Some of the conference’s most imposing forwards gave them fits defensively in losses, like Michigan’s Vladislav Goldin and Danny Wolf (combined for 37 points and 21 rebounds against the Buckeyes), Oregon’s Nathan Bittle (21 points, eight rebounds) or UCLA’s Eric Dailey Jr. (20 points, eight rebounds). Indiana’s Oumar Ballo collected 21 points and 15 rebounds in the Hoosiers’ first win over Ohio State, but was limited to nine points and seven boards in their second.

Stewart gave a boost to defense and rebounding efforts when not in foul trouble, leading the Buckeyes with 12.5 boards and two blocks per 40 minutes, but he averaged 3.4 personal fouls per contest and fouled out of seven games. He reached four fouls in 17 of his 30 outings.

Against inarguably weaker competition, the seven-foot Tilly’s rebounding rate was just 8.7 per 40 minutes in 2024-25, and is at 8.8 per 40 minutes in his career. The 6-foot-6 Royal collected 9.6 boards per 40 minutes last year. Noel’s rebounding is a tick better than Tilly’s; he hauled in 9.1 per 40 minutes in 2024-25, but both are on the slender side and will need to handle the mountainous men of the Big Ten.

Ojianwuna, a defense and rebounding specialist down low, would quell some of these concerns if he were healthy. But there’s a possibility he doesn’t see the court this season while recovering from his injury and takes a redshirt. If he does play, it likely won’t be until at least late December.

The other unknowns in this equation are sophomore Ivan Njegovan and the freshman Bynum. Bynum comes in with some pedigree as a four-star forward/center prospect. His tape is impressive, but how fast will it click for the freshman?

Njegovan only played 5.7 minutes per game in 21 appearances as an Ohio State freshman out of Croatia, but did post 10.8 rebounds and 2.7 blocks per 40 minutes. Those stats in a small sample size noted, there were clear lapses in his performance on both ends, and he’d need some major improvement to be a Big Ten-caliber hooper this campaign.

Wing

Ohio State has four wing players, by this writer’s count, and there are varying levels of concern with all four of them.

Royal is an undeniable star. His offense should improve with another year of development. But he didn’t exactly excel in perimeter defense playing power forward in 2024-25, and at small forward in 2025-26, he’s going to be defending the perimeter a lot more. Parrish proved a force in that regard at the position last year, helping the Buckeyes finish 22nd nationally in opposing 3-point percentage (30.5%).

Noel’s pros and cons have been discussed at length here already, so moving on, there are two wings on the bench for the Buckeyes: Grujicic and sophomore Colin White. White is still early in his developmental process, averaging 1.1 points and 1.1 rebounds in 19 games as a freshman. 

Grujicic, with his bevy of international experience, is likely to be Ohio State’s backup small forward as an 18-year-old. He posted 12.9 points and 4.9 rebounds per game while shooting 33.6% from 3 with FC Barcelona II in 2024-25, playing in the fourth tier of Spanish professional basketball. He had some awesome accomplishments outside his main club, too. The question with him, like Noel and Tilly, is how his game will translate.

The Buckeyes could also opt to play small ball and slide a shorter guard, such as Chatman, Thornton or Cupps to the 3 in certain lineups, though there would be obvious defensive drawbacks in those looks.