Ohio State Must Find New Starting Guard, Starting-Caliber Center and Various Depth Pieces in 2026 Transfer Portal
More than half of Ohio State’s 2025-26 basketball roster is gone.
Four seniors ran out of eligibility. Four non-seniors are set to enter the transfer portal thus far. There are two clear holes in the Buckeyes’ starting lineup, but much more on a bench that was already anemic before losing most of its pieces. The only depth contributor set to return for Ohio State is center Ivan Njegovan, who played 11.4 minutes per game and was the team’s most efficient rebounder.
With two freshmen coming in, Ohio State has eight players set for next year’s roster as things stand. Two of them, guards Mathieu Grujicic and Myles Herro, don’t appear ready to contribute anytime soon. There’s a lot of ground for the Buckeyes to cover.
As such, we’re here to break down where the needs are and the types of bodies Ohio State will seek to fill them. It’s been a rough first two portal cycles for Jake Diebler, but it’s critical that he and his staff hit on multiple evaluations for the first time in this run. Now is not the time to stagnate after the program’s first NCAA Tournament appearance in four years.
Ohio State has three major needs to fill this portal cycle:
A Starting Guard
Ohio State needs a new starting guard to pair with John Mobley Jr. Photo credit: Jim Dedmon-Imagn Images
Bruce Thornton, one of the greatest players in Ohio State history, is gone from the Buckeyes’ backcourt after four wonderful seasons. He set the school scoring record. He was the only four-time captain. The start of next season will feel strange without him.
The good news is that Ohio State is likely to return Thornton’s primary co-star, John Mobley Jr., in the backcourt after he tests the waters of the NBA draft. He upped his production to 15.7 points per game and shot 41.1% from 3-point range with a 43.2% mark overall from the field. Those marks and his 2.8 assists per game were improvements over his freshman year, and entering year three, he’s a backcourt piece to build around.
Mobley’s shooting and skill set fit best at shooting guard, but he’s more than held his own through two seasons when Ohio State has asked him to run point. As such, it’s not a pure point guard that the Buckeyes need in the portal. Diebler is known for his love of versatility in the first place. OSU will be looking for a veteran with proven production, quality decision-making, scoring ability and speed to run out in transition more.
With Herro and Grujicic both years away from being Big Ten starting-caliber, there’s a chance Ohio State could pull two higher-end guards with the promise that they can compete for the starting job. Then again, that’s harder to do in the modern era of NIL. Players often want something more guaranteed.
But for their 2026-27 prospects, the Buckeyes must, must, must land a quality starter here.
A Starting-Caliber Center
Ohio State cannot rely on solely Josh Ojianwuna for a potential starting center next season. Photo credit: Adam Cairns/Columbus Dispatch / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
There’s a world – really several worlds – where Baylor transfer Josh Ojianwuna is Ohio State’s starting center in 2026-27 after sitting out a season while he recovered from a major knee injury with the Bears. For a team that’s struggled to get consistent defense and rebounding from the center position since Felix Okpara’s departure in 2024, he showed promise in those areas before his injury.
But Ohio State can’t afford to rely solely on Ojianwuna. It must go get a center to compete with him to start at the 5. Njegovan is a second man on the Buckeyes’ roster with a defensive/rebounding lean, so that center might be someone with a bit more versatility and athleticism to provide scoring around the rim in tandem with budding star sophomore power forward Amare Bynum.
That said, a new acquisition can’t be a total wash in the rebounding and interior defense departments. Those were two of Ohio State’s greatest areas of weakness in 2025-26. The Buckeyes were 290th nationally in rebounds per game (33.2) and had a rebounding margin of -1.8 per game on the season.
If Ohio State finds a quality guard and center to fill out its starting lineup, it should propel the Buckeyes back to another NCAA Tournament appearance. But there’s a key component that nearly all of the teams in the Sweet 16 and certainly those in the Elite Eight had in this year’s Big Dance that the Buckeyes lacked this year: Depth.
Depth, Depth and More Depth
This task might be harder to complete than plugging the holes in Ohio State’s starting lineup. Big Ten-caliber transfers rarely want to go somewhere to come off the bench.
The guard and wing positions are the most glaring in the depth category. No one on Ohio State’s roster projects to be ready to contribute meaningfully from the pines at those positions next season. Colin White and Devin Royal were the wings who could have played behind incoming five-star prospect Anthony Thompson, but both hit the portal, and Herro won’t be prepared for meaningful minutes with Taison Chatman and Gabe Cupps both gone at guard.
Not that Ohio State will miss Cupps or White much. It needs upgrades over what those two, and even Chatman, provided in 2025-26. That’s a tough sell in the portal, but them’s the breaks in the modern era.
A second frontcourt piece to pair with a transfer center is also advised, though incoming four-star freshman Alex Smith might be enough in that regard. The goal for Ohio State is to get to 10 players who can be meaningful contributors next season, and the current projected roster has just five of them: Mobley, Bynum, Thompson, Ojianwuna and Njegovan.
Even if Alex Smith is ready as a depth piece right away, that leaves four spots for Ohio State to fill with players who can make an impact next season. A difficult task, to be sure, but not impossible. Let the mayhem commence.
