After spending just one season with the Ohio State men’s basketball program, Gabe Cupps, a Centerville-native and the 2022 Ohio Mr. Basketball Award winner, will enter the transfer portal. It will be Cupps’ second transfer in as many years after the former Indiana Hoosier transferred to Ohio State from Indiana last spring.
Cupps arrived in Columbus last March after two seasons at Indiana, and was expected to be the main backup guard to both Bruce Thornton and John Mobley. He appeared in 33 of Ohio State’s 34 games, averaging 1.7 points and 1.1 assists per game while shooting 37.8% from the floor and 25.9% from three-point range. Cupps averaged 12.2 minutes per game.
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The redshirt sophomore continued to play in essentially every game even during the emergence of Taison Chatman in the second half of the season, but his minutes dwindled. Cupps played fewer than 10 minutes in four of Ohio State’s final seven games, including a season-low four minutes during Ohio State’s Big Ten Tournament win over Iowa and five minutes against TCU in the NCAA Tournament.
He was non-committal about his future with Ohio State after the NCAA Tournament, telling the Columbus Dispatch, “I haven’t (thought about it). I’ve been trying to stay present. Stay in the moment, because it’s not being grateful for it and for these guys if I was thinking about next year or the next team. Stay present. I’ll figure that out.”
Cupps was a four-star recruit in the class of 2023 and was the No. 94 overall recruit in that class, according to 247Sports. Ohio State recruited Cupps out of high school, but ultimately lost out to the Hoosiers when he made his college decision in November 2021.
The 6-foot-2, 180-pound guard scored a season-high nine points during Ohio State’s win over Oregon on January 8 on 3-for-4 shooting and also grabbed three rebounds in 23 minutes off the bench. Overall, however, Cupps did not look like someone Ohio State could rely on to provide any type of production on offense. Over the course of the season, Cupps averaged 1.4 field goal attempts per game.
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Cupps was not likely to be a starter at Ohio State next season, with the likely return of John Mobley Jr. (after he goes through the NBA Draft process) as well as the strong likelihood of Ohio State adding a point guard from the transfer portal. There may have been a role for Cupps as a rotation player off the bench, but he would’ve had to compete for that role as well, with Taison Chatman also potentially returning next season.
Cupps had several high major offers out of high school aside from Ohio State and Indiana, including Michigan, Kansas State, Stanford, Virginia Tech, and Xavier.
Good luck to Gabe, wherever he winds up!
