While most of the focus on recruiting currently sits on the gridiron, Jake Diebler and the Ohio State basketball team are working to put together a solid class for the 2026 season. The Buckeyes got a bit of good news recently when one of the top players in the nation added OSU to his final seven.<\/p>\n
Five-star prospect Anthony Thompson<\/a> is the No. 8-ranked player nationally and the No. 2 small forward in the class according to 247Sports composite rankings<\/a>. His top seven are a who’s who of college basketball that includes Indiana, Kentucky<\/a>, Michigan<\/a>, North Carolina<\/a>, Purdue, Texas<\/a>, and, of course, Ohio State.<\/p>\n Does Diebler and the Buckeyes have a real shot at Thompson? Well, the 6-foot-7 prospect is an Ohio Native hailing from Hudson, Ohio, where he attends Western Reserve Academy. With the majority of his short list being within a few hours of home, it seems the young man may prefer to stay close, which could bode well for the Scarlet and Gray.<\/p>\n Currently, Ohio State has two verbal pledges for the 2026 class. One is the No. 3 point guard in the land, Marcus Johnson<\/a>. The other is power forward Alex Smith<\/a>. Both are four-star prospects and have the Buckeyes’ class ranked as the No. 2 class overall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While most of the focus on recruiting currently sits on the gridiron, Jake Diebler and the Ohio State…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":202614,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3723],"tags":[12038,7,657,12040,5746,319,217,325,12039,318,231,772,1544,67,16,9449,18827,61,134,132,66,83,17,2196],"class_list":{"0":"post-202613","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-12038","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-big","11":"tag-big-10-hub","12":"tag-buckeyes","13":"tag-college","14":"tag-college-basketball","15":"tag-college-sports","16":"tag-hub","17":"tag-mens","18":"tag-ncaa","19":"tag-ncaa-basketball","20":"tag-ncaab","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-ohio","23":"tag-ohio-state-buckeyes","24":"tag-ohio-state-university-buckeyes-mens-basketball","25":"tag-overall","26":"tag-overall-positive","27":"tag-positive","28":"tag-sports","29":"tag-sports-news","30":"tag-state","31":"tag-university"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114940752908828012","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}