Things are starting to get very real for the Ohio State men’s basketball team.
Monday, the Buckeyes will get their 2024-25 schedule officially underway with a national spotlight game on the first day of college basketball season. Ohio State and No. 20 Texas will face off inside T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, and coach Jake Diebler is hopeful that the Buckeyes will have a full roster to tip against the Longhorns.
“We are getting healthier, and I would say mostly healthy,” Diebler told reporters Wednesday afternoon inside Value City Arena.
Ohio State has participated in two warmup games while preparing for its first season with Diebler at the helm. On Oct. 18, the Buckeyes substituted liberally, played 10 different players for at least seven minutes and took an 80-62 loss at No. 20 Cincinnati in a charity exhibition game. Ohio State was without projected starting center Aaron Bradshaw for that game, and the 7-1 Kentucky transfer watched from the bench in street clothes after having taken an elbow to the head during practice.
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He returned to the lineup as Ohio State played Ohio University in a Sunday “secret” scrimmage. Teams aren’t permitted to publicize the event by NCAA rules, and while The Dispatch has learned that the Buckeyes beat the Bobcats, they were without two different, undisclosed rotation players for the scrimmage.
With the game against the Longhorns looming, Diebler sounded optimistic that they would be back in uniform for the first game of the season.
“I anticipate us being pretty much full strength,” he said. “It’s mostly kind of a non-story (as of today). If we have more information coming into the game we’ll speak more specifically about that.”
That continues what has been a trend since the majority of the roster arrived for summer workouts. Throughout the summer, the Buckeyes were consistently missing a player or two as they dealt with what were consistently described as minor injuries that wouldn’t be enough to keep them from games. It did rob Ohio State of some opportunities to build consistency and continuity within a roster with nine new players as players rotated in and out of availability.
This week, Ohio State has turned its attention from almost exclusively focused inward to the next team on the schedule. That has meant starting to define individual roles and allocate practice reps accordingly while preparing for what Monday’s season opener could be like.
“Some guys have been able to show a consistency that will help us this season and some guys will have to keep working before some of that’s ready to come out in a game,” Diebler said. “A lot of that stuff has been settled over the last week, week and a half.”
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During that same timeframe, Dielber said he’s been impressed with how he’s seen Ohio State’s on-court chemistry be forged despite the various injuries. Given the time on the calendar, it’s still a work in progress, Diebler said, but there has been progress.
“To see that growth is really encouraging, because that’s the final part,” he said. “When you bring a bunch of really good players together, and although they’re really good guys and have great off-court chemistry, there’s just no substitute for time. Time is ultimately what you need to build that on-court chemistry.”
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