Jake Diebler’s third Ohio State team will likely have several returners from this past season, but redshirt sophomore guard Taison Chatman will not be one of them. Chatman has decided to move on from Ohio State, according to multiple media reports and will finish his career elsewhere.
Chatman, a 6-foot-4, 190-pound guard from the Minneapolis area, averaged 4.3 points
per game this season while appearing in 28 of the Buckeyes’ 34 games. Through Ohio State’s first 19 games, Chatman appeared in 14 of them and averaged 1.9 points per game on 50% shooting in just under six minutes per game.
A switch was flipped on January 26 against Penn State, however — Chatman scored 11 points on 4-for-6 shooting in 17 minutes during the Buckeyes’ 84-78 win over the Nittany Lions. From that point forward, Chatman averaged 6.7 points per game over the final 14 games, playing in every game for the remainder of the season aside from Ohio State’s loss to Michigan in the Big Ten Tournament due to injury.
The redshirt sophomore scored in double-digits in five of those final 14 games, but was also held scoreless in the his final two games against Iowa and TCU, playing 14 minutes against the Hawkeyes and only four minutes against the Horned Frogs.
If we remove Ivan Njegovan from the equation due to his low number of attempts (3), Chatman was Ohio State’s most reliable three-point shooter by percentage this season, knocking them down at a 47.1% (24-for-51) clip. He was a perfect 4-for-4 from long range in Ohio State’s loss to Wisconsin on January 31, and was 3-for-4 against Indiana on March 7.
Chatman was noncommittal about his future plans after Ohio State’s loss to the Horned Frogs in the NCAA Tournament, telling the Columbus Dispatch, “I haven’t (thought about it). The season just ended. (I’ll) probably go back home, dwell on this for a little bit, and then go from there.”
Chatman was the No. 39 recruit in the 2023 recruiting class and was the No. 1 player in the state of Minnesota, according to 247Sports. He committed to Ohio State in September 2022, ahead of his senior season, and the primary Ohio State recruiter for him was then-associate head coach Jake Diebler. He was one of four recruits in the 2023 class, along with Devin Royal, Austin Parks, and Scotty Middleton.
A knee injury during his senior season of high school limited Chatman’s off-season heading into his freshman season, and it shows in his stats from that year (17 games played, 17 total points). Chatman then suffered a torn ACL heading into the 2024-25 season, which made him miss his entire sophomore year and take a medical redshirt.
In all reality, Chatman’s stretch of consistent play that started in January was the first stretch of consistent, healthy playing time he’s had since 2023.
Even with his improved play during the backside of the 2025-26 season, Chatman likely would not have been a starter on next season’s team with John Mobley Jr. projected to hold down a starting spot in the fall.
Chatman’s recruitment in the transfer portal will be an intriguing one — will teams assess him solely on his play over the final two months of the season, when he looked like an elite shooter capable of taking on a much larger role? Or will his injury history and overall body of work from this past season make teams hesitant to commit a large role to the to-be redshirt junior?
Could Chatman move down in competition level to earn a more consistent role, or will he end up making a more lateral move to come off the bench for another NCAA Tournament-caliber team?
As a high schooler, Chatman was recruited and offered by several blue blood basketball programs, including Kansas and UConn, as well as fellow Big Ten programs Iowa, Michigan, Nebraska, Northwestern, and his hometown Minnesota Golden Gophers.
Chatman will have two years of eligibility remaining.
Good luck to Taison, wherever he ends up!
