Gabe Cupps played for Indiana at Ohio State as a freshman in 2024. Now he’s a Buckeye looking to make an impact in the backcourt. (Press Pros File Photos)
Gabe Cupps and Devin Royal battled on big stages in high school. Cupps transferred from Indiana this year to help the Buckeyes get back to the NCAA Tournament. Big men Brandon Noel and Christoph Tilly are also new to the team with the same goal. Part 5 and the final piece of a summer series on the building of the 2025-2026 basketball Buckeyes.
Columbus, OH – Rivals becoming friends. It’s an archetype as old as time.
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In the case of new Ohio State teammates Gabe Cupps and Devin Royal, their story is framed by shared experiences and mutual respect.
Both won a Division I Ohio state basketball championship and both own Mr. Basketball trophies. The four times they met on the court grew in anticipation and drama.
Veteran columnist Jeff Gilbert writes Ohio State basketball and OHSAA sports for Press Pros Magazine.com.
Not many noticed the first meeting when they were sophomores. Cupps and Centerville pulled away in the fourth quarter to defeat Royal and Pickerington Central 65-56 on January 5, 2021. Cupps scored 24 points. Royal scored 10.
The Elks went on to win their only state championship that year while Central lost in a district final.
Centerville was favored to repeat as state champions in 2022 every day of the 12 months from their first title to their presumed second title. The Elks’ winning streak reached 45 games. Cupps dazzled during his junior season and was voted Mr. Basketball. Royal wasn’t nominated as a finalist.
But 10 days prior, Royal and Ohio State football star Sonny Styles upset Cupps and the Elks 55-48 in the state final at UD Arena. Royal scored 20 points. Cupps scored 14. And the debate over who should win Mr. Basketball at the end of their senior seasons began.
Both programs signed up for a showcase event the following December at Nationwide Arena in Columbus. With a new supporting cast, Cupps scored 12 points and the Elks won the rematch 60-54 in double overtime. Cupps stole the tip to start the second OT and scored to set the winning spark. Royal scored 27 points.
Devin Royal led Pickerington Central to victories over Centerville in the state final in 2022 and semifinal in 2023.
Three months later, on March 15, 2023, Royal was named Mr. Basketball. In voting by a statewide media panel, Royal won the vote over Cupps 90-87.
Three days later at UD Arena the rivals met again in the Division I state semifinals. Central won 57-53. Cupps scored 22 points, missed only two shots, and had seven assists and four steals in his final game. Royal scored 23 points on 9-of-14 shooting.
Royal and the Tigers, however, could not pull off the repeat just as the Elks had failed to do the year before. Akron Hoban beat the Tigers 53-47 in the final.
Royal went to Ohio State. Cupps went to Indiana. Royal played limited minutes as a freshman until Chris Holtmann was fired and Jake Diebler became interim head coach. Cupps started 22 games for Indiana because of an injury to senior Xavier Johnson.
Last season is when the comparisons ended. Royal became a starter and the Buckeyes’ second-leading scorer (13.7) and leading rebounder (6.9). Cupps played 24 minutes in the first four games then shut down his season to recover from a knee injury.
Royal, his starting position secure in his hometown, came back to Ohio State for his junior season. Cupps, with a new head coach arriving in Bloomington, entered the transfer portal and chose Ohio State.
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This summer the high school rivals are getting to know each other as college teammates. When asked about what it’s like to be teammates now, both broke into big smiles before they said a word.
“The first couple weeks that we were here,” Cupps said, “I was like, ‘Man, it’s really weird to be on the same team as you. We’ve been going against each other our entire lives.’”
“It definitely feels weird,” Royal said. “I’ve been playing against him for so long.”
Now that the rivalry is over, they see each other differently on and off the court.
Royal on Cupps: “Just seeing how he works, I respect him a little bit more for sure. … We connect really good. … He’s a hardnosed guard – he wants to get dirty. It’s just who he is. He wants to talk out loud, wants to be that person to build people up.”
Gabe Cupps and Centerville won a state title in 2021 and took a 45-game winning streak into the 2022 final.
Cupps on Royal: “Devin’s a great person, great teammate, great player, obviously. Being able to play with him, it obviously makes the game a lot easier for me. We’ve built a connection and a friendship, even going against each other in high school. We had a mutual respect for the type of person and player the other guy was.”
Cupps as a point guard and Royal as a wing means they will rely on each other heavily as teammates. But the rivalry and high school pride will never fully evaporate.
“I just had to let him know,” Royal said with another big smile, “that I won most of the time.”
Transfer first impressions
Cupps, Brandon Noel and Christoph Tilly used the portal to come to Ohio State in ways it was most created for.
Cupps left Indiana when Mike Woodson, the coach who recruited him, resigned under pressure. He has three years of eligibility remaining. Noel had put in four years at Wright State and wondered if a high major wanted him. Tilly developed his game for three years at Santa Clara and wanted to prove to himself he could play for a high major.
“When I went to college, I never thought it would turn out like this,” Noel said. “First off, I didn’t expect to be in college for six years. I was given the opportunity to have this last year somewhere else, and I jumped on it. I couldn’t be any happier with how it’s ended up.”
For a high-major head coach like Diebler, those are good reasons to consider when he shops the portal. Players who move because they are simply discontented aren’t always the type of players coaches want. Familiarity also helps.
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Cupps knew Diebler well from his time as a high-school recruit. Cupps said Diebler’s style reminds him of how he was coached at Centerville by his dad, Brook Cupps.
“The way Diebler coaches is he’s hard on guys, but he also cares a ton about them,” Cupps said. “He’s with us in the trenches a lot, so I think that’s the biggest thing to me. He’s not going to ask us to do something that he doesn’t truly believe in and that he won’t go to the ends of the earth to do himself.”
Cupps, who brings strong leadership qualities and defensive intensity to the team, wants to be part of an Ohio State resurgence. After two years of playing and watching, he said he sees the game differently, understands it better. He will join a backcourt with returning starters Bruce Thornton and John Mobley Jr. and redshirt sophomore Taison Chatman who has been sidelined with injuries. It’s a group, along with mobile big men, that can play at the faster pace on both ends that Diebler wants.
Devin Royal says he has good connection with new teammate Gabe Cupps.
“Coach Diebler was very adamant that the guys are going to help the team win are going to play,” Cupps said. “Taison, Junie and Bruce are all great, and I’ve had a ton of fun working with them and playing against them. I think we can play together. If we play three of us at one time we might be undersized, but I think all of us are tough enough to really stand our ground. We get guys open shots, we create for each other, and create for ourselves. And we can play super fast.”
Noel didn’t know what to expect in the portal. Diebler was one of the first coaches to contact him, and Noel saw everything he wanted.
“One of the biggest things was I wanted to win,” he said. “I came from a winning program at Wright State, and that was something I wanted to continue to do. And the vision here and the pieces they had in place, made a lot of sense for me to join this and look towards winning.”
Noel brings size at 6-foot-8, scoring and rebounding. He sees a difference in positional size than in the Horizon League, but he said the speed of the game is similar. He said he feels ready for the Big Ten’s bigger bodies and physical style. He also brings experience that he believes will help him acclimate and help the team.
“They brought me here for a reason – I didn’t just happen to luck into this,” Noel said. “So it’s a combination of that and belief in myself and all the work over the years that I put in to get here.”
Brandon Noel transferred to Ohio State to be part of a winning team.
Tilly, who is 7-0, left his family in Berlin, Germany, to play for Santa Clara in the West Coast Conference where he developed into a big man with offensive skill that the Buckeyes lacked last year. Now he’s learning more about the physical nature required to succeed in the Big Ten and to be ready for pro ball.
“I was very happy for three years at Santa Clara,” Tilly said. “It was a great time, great coaches, great, great place. But my dream was always to play high major. Everybody back home was telling me, you need to play high major. And out there my last year, I was ready for that.”
Ohio State was the first school Tilly talked to after entering the portal. He had good feelings from the start. And summer practices have been positive.
“Everything we do is very competitive, and we enjoy it,” Tilly said. “That’s how it’s supposed to be. We’re all athletes. We want to win. The coaches are doing a great job, giving us things where we can have a competitiveness edge every day.”
Diebler’s strategy is for these three transfers to help lead Ohio State back to Big Ten prominence and into the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2021.
“That’s the plan coming in to turn it around and put Ohio State where it’s meant to be,” Cupps said. “Coach Diebler preached that to me when I was getting recruited here, and that’s my goal.”
Christoph Tilly transferred to OSU because he wanted to play for a high major program.
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