Bruce Thornton, Devin Royal, and the Ohio State men\u2019s basketball team will officially tip off Year 2 of the Jake Diebler era in 81 days. Ohio State released its full non-conference schedule on Wednesday afternoon, including the season opener against IU Indy on Monday, Nov. 3, a blue-blood Midwest battle with the ACC\u2019s Notre Dame on Sunday, Nov. 16, and a Valentine\u2019s Day tilt with the Virginia Cavaliers on Saturday, Feb. 14.<\/p>\n
The Buckeyes are 2-0 all-time against the IU Indy Greyhounds, with the most recent win coming in 2022. The Buckeyes faced off with the Greyhounds (then the Jaguars) on Jan. 18, 2022, with Ohio State coming out victorious in a blowout, 83-37. Gene Brown led all scorers with 14 points.<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s season-opener will be the Division-I coaching debut for IU Indy coach Ben Howlett, who is a Marietta, Ohio-native. Howlett won 217 games in eight seasons at Division-II West Liberty University from 2017-25, taking the Hilltoppers to the Elite Eight two times as the leader of that program.<\/p>\n
Ohio State returns three of its top four scorers from a season ago, including Thornton, a soon-to-be four-time captain of the program and an All-American candidate. The Buckeyes rank at the top of the Big Ten in offense retained from a year ago, with Thornton, Royal, and John Mobley Jr. combining for 44.4 points per game.<\/p>\n
On top of the three big returners, Ohio State also added two highly productive and experienced mid-major transfers in Christoph Tilly (Santa Clara) and Brandon Noel (Wright State). Tilly, a 7-foot, 240-pound center, averaged 12.5 points per game last season. Noel, a 6-foot-8, 240-pound forward, averaged 19 points per game for a Raider squad that finished 15-18 a season ago. Both Tilly and Noel are expected to start at the beginning of the season.<\/p>\n
Ohio State is expected to start the season in or near the back end of the AP Top-25 Poll. With its first six games taking place at home, the Buckeyes will have an opportunity to start the season 6-0 for the first time since the 2019-20 season. Ohio State was ranked for one week last season in early November, lost to Texas A&M, and was not ranked again for the remainder of the season.<\/p>\n
The Buckeyes\u2019 full 2024-2025 non-conference schedule:<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bruce Thornton, Devin Royal, and the Ohio State men\u2019s basketball team will officially tip off Year 2 of…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":145209,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[1339,1317,1337,1338,60898,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-145208","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-basketball","11":"tag-ncaabasketball","12":"tag-ohio-state-mens-basketball","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115027433756467684","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}