SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – The dark athletic facility couldn’t hide the megawatt smile on John Mobley Jr.’s face.
On August 2 and 3, the Ohio State men’s basketball team will face off against two Puerto Rican teams to conclude its summer foreign exhibition trip. In preparation for the games at Coliseo Ruben Rodriguez, the Buckeyes went through the paces of one final practice at the JUMP Sports Development Center on August 1.
And they did it in the dark.
As Ohio State arrived at the two-court facility, they entered a building dealing with a power outage. While the lights briefly flickered back on about 20 minutes into practice, they didn’t stay that way for long, and Ohio State went through its drills with the aid of a few open doors that spilled sunlight onto the floor.
Not that any of that mattered to Mobley. In less than 24 hours, the Buckeyes had a game to play against someone who wouldn’t be wearing a scarlet or gray jersey.
“Can’t wait,” he said, drinking a post-practice smoothie prepared by the staff at the athletic facility. “We’ve been going at each other’s heads all summer, so I can’t wait to put it on somebody else. It’s going to be fun. It’s going to be interesting. It’s going to be super competitive and I can’t wait.”
No power outage was going to dim that enthusiasm. Ohio State’s second-leading scorer a season ago, Mobley is expected to step into an expanded role as a junior. Although official games won’t get underway for three more months, Mobley and his teammates are ready for the opportunity to face someone, anyone, else.
Coach Jake Diebler doesn’t have a detailed scouting report of Equipo 1 or Equipo 2, so he’s emphasizing the Buckeyes doing what they have been coached to do throughout the summer.
“I want our guys to have a great competitive spirit, play with toughness and physicality, which we’ll see because we’re playing against pros,” he said. “That’ll simulate a really good team that’ll be on our schedule. Excited to see how we play together and how we respond to that stuff.”
While in Puerto Rico, Ohio State will play under FIBA rules, which feature a 24-second shot clock and four quarters instead of two halves. The plan is for the Buckeyes to substitute liberally, Diebler said, and spread out playing time among the 14 players on the roster.
That will include Josh Ojianwuna, a fifth-year center who transferred from Baylor a year ago and sat out 2025-26 while recovering from a left knee injury. The 6-foot-10, 270-pound center will be a full participant while in Puerto Rico.
“We’ve been strategic in bringing him along, but he’s been playing competitively now up and down for the last couple of weeks,” Diebler said. “When he’s out there, the physicality of our team looks and feels different. His defensive impact is real. As he’s building into being a major component of this team, I’m excited to see some small doses of what that could look like.”
Without knowing much about the opponent, Diebler said his hope is that the Buckeyes will have to figure out how to deal with some adversity on the fly. The coaches will try to introduce some of that as well: Diebler said there could be situations where they diagram a new play during a timeout and see if the group on the floor can properly execute it, for example.
More than the final statistics, score or lineups, Diebler said he will be evaluating how well players compete and hold to the standards he has set during his first two years leading the program.
“There’s program standards from a competitiveness and toughness that I expect us to do well at, but the rest will be different,” he said. “Different is good this time of year. It’s a marker for us to make sure that guys are buying into what we’re doing and they’re trying to play with the competitiveness and toughness we want and at the pace we want to play at.”
Mobley echoed that sentiment with a smile.
“I just can’t wait to see us compete,” he said. “That’s all I care about. As a leader, I feel like you go out there and compete and play for each other and no matter what the outcome is, we’re fine with it, fine with the result.”
Ohio State men’s basketball beat writer Adam Jardy can be reached at ajardy@dispatch.com, on Bluesky at @cdadamjardy.bsky.social or on Twitter at @AdamJardy.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: After power outage, Ohio State basketball ready for chance to face new foes
Reporting by Adam Jardy, Columbus Dispatch / The Columbus Dispatch
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By Adam Jardy, Columbus Dispatch | USA TODAY Network
