There will be a lot of new faces on the Ohio State men’s basketball team next season.
In addition to losing four players who exhausted their eligibility, the Buckeyes have at least four players entering the transfer portal when it officially opens April 7.
Devin Royal was the first member of the 2025-26 team to share that he was leaving the program. Three more Buckeyes have joined him. Those are three of coach Jake Diebler’s reserves who will all play their college basketball next season: Taison Chatman, Gabe Cupps I Colin White.
Together, Chatman, Cubbs and White averaged 6.9 points, 3.3 rebounds and 2.3 assists per game.
When the transfer portal opens, the Buckeyes will be in the market for a starting point guard and starting-caliber center to replace outgoing seniors Bruce Thornton and Christoph Tilly. They will also be in the market for more bench depth, an issue that plagued Diebler’s team throughout 2025-26.
Here are four thoughts on the departures. You can keep tabs on Ohio State's roster situation during the offseason with our tracker here.
This clears the decks for a bench reset
Arguably the biggest criticism of OSU this past season was its lack of consistent bench production. Ohio State finished 327th nationally in percentage of bench minutes played, while four players averaged at least 28.5 minutes per game and three were north of 30 per game. The Buckeyes got no bench scoring in two games last year, both losses, and had five others in which the bench provided three points or fewer.
The only player outside of the starting five Diebler used for the final 24 games of the season to average more than five points per game was Brandon Noel, who missed two months with a foot injury after having lost his starting spot to emerging freshman Amare Bynum.
Noel and the Buckeyes' other regulars combined to score 88.6% of Ohio State’s points in 2025-26.
When Noel went down with his injury, the lack of scoring punch from the bench became even more apparent. While Chatman had his moments, most notably a three-game stretch in which he scored in double figures, that lack of production outside the starting unit was an insurmountable problem.
Taison Chatman had the highest ceiling
The numbers bear out the obvious: Of the three Ohio State reserves to enter the portal, Chatman is the one who figures to garner the most interest. The No. 33 prospect in the 2023 recruiting class, according to 247Sports, the 6-foot-4, 190-pound Minneapolis native eventually fought his way into the rotation as a redshirt sophomore after missing the prior year with a knee injury.
Na 4.3 points per game, Chatman was Ohio State’s highest bench scorer. He improved significantly since averaging 1.9 points per game through the first 19 games of the season. However, he scored 57 of his 121 points (47.1%) in five of his 28 appearances, and his production dipped down the stretch.
He’s got a smooth jumper and shot 47.1% (24 for 51) from 3-point range. Of these three players to depart, Chatman was the one who had the highest ceiling in 2026-27 should he have returned.
Colin White’s lack of offseason showed
White battled to simply get to the floor, much less contribute. A leg injury suffered in the final moments of a 102-69 win against Green Bay on Nov. 25, 2024, knocked him out of the lineup for the next six games of his freshman year and ultimately led to an offseason surgery that kept him from fully practicing until right around the start of 2025-26.
It showed.
White’s high pain tolerance and determination to get on the court endeared him to Diebler, but there was a ceiling on his contributions. He appeared in 29 games as a sophomore, two of which saw him not record a single statistic, and saw his scoring and rebounding averages dip from his freshman year, even as his playing time increased. By season’s end, White was passing up shots. He was unable to get off the bench in both the Big Ten Tournament quarterfinal loss to Michigan and the NCAA Tournament loss to TCU.
At season’s end, White said he still wasn’t fully healthy and that getting there would be his top offseason priority. Had he been able to get there last offseason, 2025-26 might have been a different story.
Gabe Cupps never really panned out
Trying to recruit a backup guard willing to accept whatever minutes remained behind Bruce Thornton and John Mobley Jr. without overpaying was a tough needle to thread. That's what led to the signing of former Ohio Mr. Basketball Gabe Cupps, an undersized Indiana transfer who was expected to help run things as a backup, score a few points and play solid defense while letting Ohio State’s playmakers shine.
It never quite clicked. While he wasn’t brought in to be more than a role player, Cupps routinely passed up open shots early or drove into bad spots on the floor, picked up his dribble and turned the ball over. During a stretch late in the season, Cupps had more personal fouls than points, finishing with 55 points and 49 fouls. He had one game in which he recorded no statistics and two others in which his only statistical contribution was a foul.
Cupps was battling a wrist injury for the back half of the season. That almost certainly contributed to his numbers (or lack thereof); but his size (6-2, 180), propensity to turn the ball over (team-high 28.6% turnover rate per KenPom.com) and foul issues (4.8 per 40 minutes, most among Ohio State’s non-centers) all tell the tale.
Ohio State men's basketball beat writer Adam Jardy can be reached at ajardy@dispatch.com, on Bluesky at @cdadamjardy.bsky.social or on Twitter at @AdamJardy.