Ohio State has landed three current or former five-stars since Jake Diebler assumed head coaching duties in March, and it appears the program is not done trying to bring in top-level talent.
According to On3’s Joe Tipton, the Buckeyes are one of several high-profile Power Six teams who are still “in the hunt” to land Huntington (Wva.) Prep five-star shooting guard Darryn Peterson (6-5, 195), the nation’s third-best prospect and top shooting guard in the 2025 class.
The Buckeyes have some stiff competition in the recruitment of Peterson, with perennial blue bloods Kansas, Kentucky and North Carolina along with Arkansas and USC, among other programs, all still in the mix. But Peterson, a Canton, Ohio, native who had initially placed Ohio State in his top eight in January before reopening his recruitment completely on April 29 due to the several head coaching changes in college basketball, said Diebler and the Buckeyes have caught his eye.
“They’ve been getting guys,” he told On3 Sports. “With coach Diebler being the head coach now, that’s who I’ve been talking to the most. He’s been recruiting me since I was young. The relationship is there. I’m feeling them too, I’m feeling them a lot.”
As Peterson alluded to, he is no stranger to Diebler and the program. The Buckeyes, then-led by Chris Holtmann, first offered the shooting guard a scholarship when he was a freshman at Cuyahoga (Ohio) Valley in August of 2021, and have since hosted him on two unofficial visits in September of 2022 and last October.
“We always said Ohio State from the beginning, just being Ohio guys,” Darryl Peterson, Darryn’s father, told the Columbus Dispatch after his son’s October visit. “But people (were) saying, ‘Can you get everything you want from a place like that?’ Going on campus for the second time, it answered the question the first time but that was more of a visit, seeing the place.
“This time it was more, we saw film, saw some offensive stuff, and saw the practices,” he continued. “The time was more letting us see that we can get what we need from a place like Ohio State.”
Peterson has not made a visit to Columbus since Holtmann’s firing — he reportedly had his first official visit to Ohio State canceled this season after the February coaching change — but the now-Diebler-led program re-offered him a scholarship in April. Kentucky, now under the leadership of Mark Pope, also re-offered him, and he plans on visiting the Wildcats along with North Carolina and Arkansas, who are now led by John Calipari, in the future.
Peterson, who has also had an unofficial visit to Michigan, is coming off his first season with basketball-centric Huntington Prep after spending his first two seasons at Cuyahoga Valley. He also continues to compete at the AAU level for Phenom United, which is led by Darryl Peterson.
Peterson said the next step for him in his recruitment is to schedule and go on visits, but he is reportedly in no rush to make a decision.
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