Keita Bates-Diop found out about the transfers from Ohio State’s basketball team just like everybody else.
“I was just looking at Twitter and they were all transfer, transfer, transfer,” he said Wednesday.
The transfers created a lot of questions. Bates-Diop and some of his other teammates wondered what was going on. He heard those same concerns from those closest to him: friends and family members.
He had no answers.
“It was a weird couple of weeks just because we didn’t know who was going to be here and all that,” Bates-Diop said. “It was one after the other after the other. And then [assistant coach Jeff] Boals got the head coaching job and I was like, ‘Who’s gonna be here?’”
Daniel Giddens, A.J. Harris and Mickey Mitchell left the Ohio State program following a somewhat disappointing 21-14 season and an NIT appearance. Austin Grandstaff transferred to Oklahoma in December, meaning four of the Buckeyes’ highly-touted 2015 recruiting class opted to leave the program after just one season. JaQuan Lyle is the lone man returning.
Boals was recently named the head coach at Stony Brook after a seven-year stint on Thad Matta's staff.
So while it was a tough few weeks for Bates-Diop — who was also going through a personal battle with mono throughout all of this, more on that later — he found the silver lining knowing the likes of Lyle, Jae’Sean Tate, Marc Loving, Kam Williams and Trevor Thompson were all likely to be back with him.
“We’ve pretty much settled into who we have and I think we’re looking forward to it,” Bates-Diop said. “We’ve got a good core group coming back and I think we’ll be good.”
That core is crucially important to Ohio State’s future. Loving is the lone senior next year and the rest of the returning players will be a huge part of the the Buckeyes’ potential success going forward. The team returns its top-six scorers, 83 percent of its rebounding and 79 percent of its assists.
Bates-Diop was Ohio State’s second-leading scorer (11.8 points per game) and leading rebounder (6.4 per game) a season ago. He’s a vitally important piece to Matta’s puzzle.
But as Ohio State’s up-and-down season neared its end, the 6-foot-7 junior-to-be felt something was a bit off. He was consistently fatigued and knew something was not right.
“I started feeling it for like a week, but I thought it was just like regular fatigue,” Bates-Diop said. “Then I got blood work done and it was what it was and I was done after that.”
Bates-Diop was diagnosed with mononucleosis at the end of the Buckeyes’ season and did not play in either of the NIT games. He was there, and sat on the bench with his teammates, but he was not able to participate in games. He couldn’t practice, either, for risk of further damaging his spleen.
Though he was always tired and "never slept that much in my life," it was painful and uncomfortable. He lost 20 pounds.
“I was down to 209,” he said.
But he’s fully healthy now and resumed regular basketball activities. He’s back up to the 230 pounds he played at last season, and he’s preparing to help get Ohio State back into the Big Ten title race as well as the NCAA tournament.
And so while it was a rough couple of weeks for the program and for Bates-Diop personally, but the Normal, Illinois native says there’s nothing but excitement about the future.
“Part of this year was just being young and working through freshmen and it was my first year really playing. Me, Kam and Quan kind of working through our first college experience and struggles,” Bates-Diop said. “Now we have a full year under us and all that stuff that we dealt with with the turnovers and little things and the people leaving that didn’t want to be here it’s going to help us a lot.”
