Even though it’s football season, college basketball is just around the corner, with the Buckeyes tipping off on Nov. 3. There were a lot of roster changes for Ohio State heading into the 2025-26 season, and over the next couple of months we will be dropping one player preview per week to get you caught up on the current roster.
The Gabe Cupps File
Name: Gabe Cupps
Position: Guard
Class: Redshirt Sophomore
High School/Former School: Centerville/Indiana
Hometown: Dayton, Ohio
Height: 6-foot-2
Weight: 180 pounds
Breakdown
As a top
100 recruit in the 2023 recruiting class, Cupps spent the first two seasons of his collegiate career at Indiana. Due to an injury to starting point guard Xavier Johnson, Cupps appeared in 33 games and made 22 starts as a freshman.
Cupps is one of five freshmen in the Big Ten to make at least 20 starts that season. He averaged 2.6 points, 1.8 rebounds and 1.2 assists per game playing 21.7 minutes per contest. In his sophomore season last year, he only played in four games and received a medical redshirt due to a lower body injury, so he has three years of eligibility remaining.
In high school, he was named 2022 Ohio Mr. Basketball, and won the 2021 high school state title for his father and head coach, Brook Cupps, at Centerville high school. He led Centerville to back-to-back state title games in 2021 and 2022.
After winning the state title in 2021, he and Centerville finished runner-up in the 2022 state tournament to Devin Royal and Pickerington Central.
He also played AAU basketball for Midwest Basketball Club.
Cupps was named to the 2025 Academic All-Big Ten team.
Expected Role
Cupps is a player that is looking for a fresh start after two seasons at Indiana did not amount to much production. He was thrust into a tough situation during his freshman season, and was forced to start unexpectedly for most of the year. Then, as a sophomore, he only played in four games before an injury prematurely ended his season.
Now, Cupps is ready to live up to the recruiting hype in Columbus.
“100 percent,” Cupps told Eleven Warriors about reaching his full potential. “Coming back from injury, I feel like I see the game in a very different way. And I think all players do once they’ve had more time to just kind of watch the college game, especially being in it. But I think now I’m much more comfortable playing freely with who I think I am and the player that I want to be.”
He also talked about his Indiana experience, and recognizes those tough spots he was put in as a freshman helped him in the long run.
“Even though I didn’t produce how I wanted to, you can’t trade that experience for anything,” Cupps said. “Now I just feel like the game’s slowing down for me, and I can help guys that haven’t either played in the Big Ten or haven’t played in college at all. So, I feel like I’m a guy that people can ask questions to and just be a source of experience for guys.”
Cupps is joining a backcourt that returns its two starters, plus Taison Chatman is coming off an injury and will look to play valuable minutes as well.
Head coach Jake Diebler had high praise for Cupps and what he will bring to the team.
“I’ve just always seen part of me in him,” Diebler said in a press conference earlier this year. “He’s better than I was, but I’ve always seen a lot of who I was as a player in him and I just, I like that. And I think it impacts winning, I think it’s important, I think it’s impactful. We felt like we needed to raise kind of our team internal leadership, and I think he certainly does that.”
With Thornton and Mobley both starting and playing a heavy part of the backcourt minutes, and Chatman likely being the first guard off the bench, Cupps will play, but he will only play around 10 minutes a game, especially as he eases back into competitive action.
