Jake Diebler’s strategy for developing a winner begins with retention and development. (Press Pros Feature Photos)
Second-year head coach Jake Diebler is following a plan he expects to make Ohio State relevant again for years to come. And he’s using every avenue possible in his effort to make it happen. Part 1 of a summer series on the building of the 2025-2026 basketball Buckeyes.
Columbus, OH – Creating a college basketball program to succeed season to season to season without dipping or flat-lining is more difficult than ever. We all know why.
Transfer portal. And the wild-west NIL market enticing players to seek greener grass.
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Jake Diebler’s job as Ohio State’s head coach is exponentially more than developing players and winning strategies for game day. He must manage the challenges of yearly roster construction and player wants, and he must have a strategy to do so.
Veteran columnist Jeff Gilbert writes Ohio State basketball and OHSAA sports for Press Pros Magazine.com.
More importantly, too keep his job long term, he must execute that strategy to return the Buckeyes to being yearly Big Ten title contenders and beyond-the-bubble NCAA Tournament participants. Those who invest time and money to watch the Buckeyes in person and those who invest time to watch them on TV, want to see a program like the one Thad Matta, the program’s winningest coach, ran from 2004-2017.
Who wouldn’t want to look back in 2040 and see a Matta-like regime? Who wouldn’t want to start comparing Diebler to Izzo or Painter? Maybe it goes that way, maybe it doesn’t. Maybe you think he’s not the guy who can do it. Maybe you wonder if anyone can.
Hypotheticals, like being a perennial Big Ten or national power, have no chance without a plan. They’re just wishful ramblings. Of course, not all plans thrive, but Diebler, at least, has one. And it never felt like Chris Holtmann did.
Diebler talked on Wednesday about his roster management goals this off-season and presumably into the future. The results of those goals, so far, look promising. In short, they are retention, development, leveraging the transfer portal and relying on the new NIL models the university is developing, based on recent court rulings, that might tame the industry.
Bruce Thornton flirted with the NBA Draft but ultimately decided another year at Ohio State was best.
The top goal is Diebler’s version of R&D: retention and development.
“Those two things have to exist for us,” he said.
Ohio State’s three best players – Bruce Thornton, Devin Royal, John Mobley Jr. – are back. Check that box that often is left blank after missing the NCAA Tournament. Diebler also wanted to retain developmental players Taison Chatman, Colin White and Ivan Njegovan. Check that box.
The R&D path can’t exist without recruiting high-level freshmen. Amare Bynum, a 6-foot-8 skilled and physical four-man, checks that box. And eventually the same might be said for Mathieu Grujicic from Germany and Myles Herro, brother of NBA All-Star Tyler Herro.
The transfer portal is mostly viewed negatively because it often takes away good players. But no one is unhappy about anyone who left the Buckeyes after last season. What the portal gives, however, can be positive.
Diebler had to get his outsourcing right this year. And, in June at least, it looks like he did. He needed to improve the frontcourt scoring and rebounding and he needed to add dependable depth to the backcourt. He had to check the boxes that didn’t get checked last year.
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Welcome to Columbus, 7-foot senior Christoph Tilly, 6-8 fifth-year Brandon Noel, 6-2 sophomore Gabe Cupps and 6-10 senior Josh Ojianwuna. Each one checks a box or boxes for the insufficient skills of last year’s imports – post scoring, rebounding, Big-Ten size and physicality, playmaking and leadership.
“We’re certainly going to be aggressive in the portal to complement the pieces we have, and sometimes a complement needs to be a high, high impact player,” Diebler said. “We want to be able to have the flexibility in the spring to maneuver.”
Christoph Tilly’s transfer from Santa Clara for his senior season gives the Buckeyes a low-post scoring threat they didn’t have last year.
Success in the portal is tied to financial opportunities that are increasingly important to athletes as college sports now follow a more professional model. The recent court settlement established a framework for revenue sharing between schools and athletes.
“The encouraging thing about being at The Ohio State University is we’re going to be on the cutting edge and under Ross [Bjork’s] leadership and feel real confident once everything truly is settled,” Diebler said.
A more stable financial environment should, in theory, allow players to focus more attention on the more important team aspects that attract them to the program. And those aspects, that Diebler is orchestrating to promote R&D and portal success, are the everyday, culture-building avenues he wants to drive his program down.
The underlying goal is this: Create a love for and dedication to Ohio State basketball. That’s a difficult task for a program rarely acknowledged (other than the 1960s and Matta’s best years) as anything close to being the top program or best coaching job in the Big 10.
Diebler has a plan to make R&D and outsourcing a symbiotic relationship that promotes growth, longevity and dedication to the program. And like every successful season, seeds are sown in the summer. How the program grows, if he can pull this off, is ultimately Diebler’s responsibility. And, it seems, he started growing stick-with-our-program roots a year ago, or Thornton, Royal and Mobley Jr. might be getting to know new teammates elsewhere.
Diebler’s recent Vet Camp brought former players DeAngelo Russell, Greg Oden and many others back to campus.
“You guys know how much I care about this program and how much I care about the greater Ohio State hoops family, and this is the best display of that,” Diebler said. “I want our former players around because our guys see and feel in a tangible way that Ohio State basketball is really, really important.”
Diebler’s favorite moments were when he saw vets talking to current players about basketball and life. He saw Russell put his arm around Thornton and Mobley Jr. and talk about leadership. He saw Scoonie Penn talk with them about ball screens. He saw Oden work with Njegovan on post play.
“We had a ton of that the last couple days on the court, in the weight room, off the court, at dinner,” Diebler said. “I’m so thankful for our former players and how much they care and love this program and their investment in our current guys.”
Diebler realizes it’s June and the team is far from ready for Big Ten play. But he loved the feedback from Russell.
“D’Angelo told me twice in one game, ‘Your guys are going hard,’” he said. “And that’s important, that matters to me. We want to be the hardest playing team, the toughest team out there. So for D’Angelo to say that, and I didn’t ask him that, that made me really excited.”
Diebler mentioned three words Wednesday that he wants to serve as a daily reminder of why the players are here, playing for Ohio State, trying to be the start of a resurgence.
Winning over everything.
Catchy. T-shirt worthy, perhaps. But he doesn’t mean winning over other important things in life like faith, family and school. Just the stuff – most of it outside noise – that distracts from what is important. Diebler admitted college sports feels more professional every year, so he started saying “winning over everything” late last season because he saw distractions doing damage.
“Our guys have so much coming at them, so it’s hard to fight for that every single day,” Diebler said. “Whatever everything can mean, and we’re constantly defining this, and they’re helping us define this. But keeping winning first. Once you get here and the season starts, winning’s more important than those other things.”
Diebler, likewise, centered his year-round strategy around winning over everything. Now he just has to make it happen.
Coming soon
What the three returning starters have to say
The remade frontcourt
The experienced backcourt
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