Ohio State has reportedly lost one of its 2024-25 assistants to a Big Ten rival.
According to multiple reports, Talor Battle is leaving Jake Diebler’s staff to return to his alma mater Penn State as an assistant coach under Nittany Lions head coach Mike Rhoades. Battle will replace Penn State assistant Jimmy Martelli after he left for the same role at VCU, according to the Centre Daily Times.
Battle, 36, spent just one season at Ohio State after being hired by Diebler in June, working primarily with the Buckeyes’ guards all season. He helped Ohio State’s backcourt turn into the strength of the team by developing true freshman John Mobley Jr. into a reliable scorer and junior Bruce Thornton into a second-team All-Big Ten player.
He returns to State College, Pa., 15 years after wrapping up his decorative four-year career with Penn State, where he became the program’ all-time leading scorer at 2,213 points as well as a three-time All-Big Ten selection across his 134 games played (132 starts) in blue and white. The Albany, New York, native also led the Nittany Lions to their first NCAA tournament appearance in a decade in 2010-11.
Battle — who also spent two seasons as an assistant at Northwestern, where he coached his younger brother and Wildcats’ all-time leading scorer Boo Buie — now will be tasked with helping Penn State return to the NCAA tournament for the first time since the 2022-23 season and just the 11th time in the program’s 129-year history.
As for Ohio State, Diebler will now be tasked with finding another assistant coach to fill out his 2024-25 staff, which — as BSB went to press — is composed of associate head coach Joel Justus and assistants Dave Dickerson, Luke Simons and Jamall Walker.
