ROSEMONT, Ill. – Jake Diebler had a pretty good idea of what he was going to tell his team.
It had been a day of adversity for Ohio State
, and the men’s basketball coach was making his way into a locker room at the Lindner Family Tennis Center after a tough ending. Playing in an outdoor exhibition game in Mason, Ohio, the Buckeyes had let a seven-point lead disappear in the final 10 minutes and dropped a 79-68 loss to Cincinnati on Oct. 7.Diebler had a message ready to be delivered. The only problem was that John Mobley Jr., his leading candidate to assume the role of team captain, had already handled the matter.
“I had a meeting with the guys right after, letting them know this is a learning process,” Mobley said one day later at Big Ten media
day. “I don’t want to see nobody leaving with their heads down. Everybody keep your heads up. It’s only October 7th. We’ve got so many trial runs before the actual runs. Use this as a learning experience.”
On a day when Diebler hoped to learn more about his 2026-27 team, the leadership of Mobley, a second-team All-Big Ten pick in the preseason Columbus Dispatch media poll, stood out. Sure, Diebler would have preferred that the Buckeyes hit the road headed back north on I-71 with a victory under their belts, but the event was meant to be a challenge.
So while there was plenty from Ohio State’s on-court performance that Diebler was itching to analyze and work to correct, Mobley’s postgame pep talk was a highlight that had the coach smiling as he recalled it.
“It’s a great sign for us,” Diebler said. “That’s the value of what we experienced [against Cincinnati]. That situation doesn’t come up if we win. That situation doesn’t come up if we’re playing in a closed scrimmage. Juices were flowing.”
The Buckeyes said goodbye to four-time captain Bruce Thornton after the 2025-26 season, and since then, Diebler and his assistants have been eyeing Mobley as a natural successor. They believed his fiery personality and passion for playing for his hometown school made him a natural fit for the role. It’s why, in 2025, Diebler brought Mobley with Ohio State’s contingent of Devin Royal, Christoph Tilly and Thornton to Big Ten media day even though he would not participate in any podium interview sessions.
On Oct. 7, Mobley was Ohio State’s representative in the pregame captains’ meeting. And before Diebler ever got to the locker room after the game, Mobley said he had pointed out that they weren’t good enough defensively, that they have to get better at executing their assignments out of huddles and timeouts and that they have to get stops in critical moments. He told the Buckeyes to look Diebler in the eyes when he spoke to them.
“It was good hearing Juni’s voice there,” sophomore forward Amare Bynum said. “Definitely at the game everybody’s heads were down a little bit. It was our first loss in front of fans, so it felt different. After he talked to us, everybody felt that joy come back to us.”
Mobley will have company leading the team this season. At media day, Bynum said the Buckeyes have a leadership group consisting of Justin Pippen, Mobley and himself, and Diebler said there are early signs of a player-led culture within the locker room.
“They realized before I could get in there that we didn’t play 40 minutes to the standard we want,” he said. “That self-policing and the opportunity for that to happen was great. Its value is tremendous, and it’s a great sign for us that he unprompted stepped up and took ownership of that. I love that.”
Ohio State men's basketball beat writer Adam Jardy can be reached at ajardy@dispatch.com, on Bluesky at @cdadamjardy.bsky.social, on Instagram at @cdadamjardyor on Twitter at @AdamJardy.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: What did John Mobley tell Ohio State immediately after Cincinnati loss?
