Recruiting losses don’t have to be forever.
Now that transfer movement has become commonplace in college football, coaches and schools sometimes get a second chance to bring in players they recruited but didn’t land out of high school. When Ryan Day was asked about that back in December, he said that made it all the more important for Ohio State to build and maintain strong relationships with the players they recruit while they are in high school.
“I can't sit here and tell you that we recruit guys for down the road. But it's all about relationships in the end, and this is a small world, the football world, and we're going to continue to cross paths with folks,” Day said. “You always handle yourself with class, because you just never know … those opportunities are going to probably happen more and more moving forward.”
Those relationships paid off in a significant way for Ohio State this summer when the Buckeyes landed three players during the second wave of this offseason’s transfer movement who had previously been recruited by OSU and/or at least one of its coaches.
The most outright example of Ohio State turning a previous recruiting loss into a transfer portal win came with the addition of former Ole Miss defensive tackle Tywone Malone, who was a priority target for Larry Johnson and the Buckeyes during the 2021 recruiting cycle.
Ohio State looked to be a frontrunner at one point in Malone’s high school recruitment, but the four-star DT from New Jersey ended up leaving the Buckeyes out of his top six before choosing the Rebels. Malone’s desire to play both baseball and football in college was a factor in his trending away from Ohio State, which prefers its players to focus on one sport. But Johnson always thought Malone would be a good fit with the Buckeyes if he chose to dedicate himself to football, and the relationship Johnson and Malone built several years before was a major reason why Malone ended up in Columbus after entering the portal in April with a plan to play only football.
“I liked him in high school. I saw him in high school, recruited him out of high school. We thought we had a shot at him, but he wanted to play baseball and do both,” Johnson said in May. “We felt like it was someone we knew (when he entered the portal). That was the first thing. We weren't strangers to him. We knew he could fit our culture. That was a key, because you want to make sure you put the right guys in the room. And we felt like he met all those criteria.”
In recruiting Malone and his former Ole Miss teammate Davison Igbinosun out of the portal, Ohio State had an additional advantage: AT Turner, who joined the Buckeyes as an associate director of strength and conditioning this offseason, previously worked with Malone and Igbinosun as an assistant strength and conditioning coach in Oxford last year. Nick Savage, who became the head strength and conditioning coach at Ole Miss in 2022, was also previously an intern at Ohio State, giving the Buckeyes multiple sources to get intel on Malone and Igbinosun that gave Ohio State confidence they would fit well within the program.
“It was good to get some info on him right away. And you kind of knew the background of their fitness levels and their training background and you kind of just grow from there,” Ohio State director of sports performance Mickey Marotti said of the Ole Miss transfers.
Lorenzo Styles Jr. is another example of a player who was previously recruited by Ohio State as a high schooler that joined the Buckeyes this summer after spending two years elsewhere. In Styles’ case, he chose to play at Notre Dame instead of Ohio State initially because the Fighting Irish recruited him to play wide receiver, the position he desired to play at the time, while the Buckeyes recruited him as a cornerback.
As a native of nearby Pickerington, Ohio, whose father Lorenzo played for the Buckeyes and whose younger brother Sonny currently plays for the Buckeyes, Styles Jr. had plenty of reasons to want to transfer to Ohio State after deciding to move to defense this offseason. But his existing relationships with several Ohio State coaches – including Brian Hartline, even though OSU was more interested in Styles as a cornerback than as a receiver –certainly didn’t hurt the Buckeyes’ efforts to land him the second time around.
“He's a great athlete. Always was in high school. I thought he was a heck of a player,” Hartline said. “I may have told him, I thought his best position was corner. So I know it's always tough finding the path and believing in what you want to do and then maybe switching. I can only guess how hard that would be. But I'm really excited he's back. As an individual, as a person, he's awesome. So to add more and more people like that to our locker room is only a bonus for us.”
Lorenzo Styles Jr. made several visits to Ohio State as a high school recruit from nearby Pickerington, Ohio.
While the defensive coaches who recruited Styles out of high school are no longer at Ohio State, he also has a longstanding relationship with his new position coach, Ohio State secondary coach Tim Walton, because Walton played with Lorenzo Sr. during their own Ohio State careers. That relationship made the two sides all the more comfortable with each other as Styles Jr. made the decision to transfer to OSU.
“I've been knowing him, Lorenzo (Sr.), for a long time. So all of that, the process of knowing each other, knowing the background of the family, knowing the work ethic, knowing the discipline, all those things helped in that process,” Walton said. “It just gives you a familiarity of you know what you're getting as far as the work ethic and toughness, competitiveness, things like that. You know, Lorenzo was a heck of a player when he played, and that understanding the game, what it takes to play, the sacrifice and the commitment that’s needed for that, it just helps with that part of it.”
The Buckeyes’ other scholarship transfer addition this summer, former San Diego State offensive tackle Josh Simmons, wasn’t offered by Ohio State as a high school recruit. But he was recruited by Ohio State offensive line coach Justin Frye, who gave Simmons one of his first offers after he worked out at a camp at UCLA – where Frye coached at the time – in 2019.
That made Frye comfortable with bringing in Simmons as the Buckeyes searched for a transfer offensive tackle who could come in and compete for a starting job in preseason camp.
“Just having some common ground of being able to work with him before and being out there with him is obviously a huge help. And then for him, just understanding what this place is, what it can do for him, what he can do for the team and having some familiarity,” Frye said. “It was good, because I had hands on, I had a prior relationship, I'd been out there for so many years and being around the right people to ask the right questions.”
Simmons told Eleven Warriors upon committing to Ohio State that his relationship with Frye was a primary reason why he chose to become a Buckeye.
“I could only imagine what that could do for my game. I knew this is where I needed to be at,” Simmons said. “Coach Frye taught me a lot about offensive line play, there was just a lot of different tweaks and changes.”
This year wasn’t the first time that existing relationships paid off for Day and his staff in the transfer portal. Trey Sermon cited his relationship with Ohio State running backs coach Tony Alford from his days as a high school recruit when he transferred from Oklahoma to Ohio State in 2020. Of course, Tanner McCalister’s transfer to Ohio State last year was directly tied to his relationship with defensive coordinator Jim Knowles, who he had played for at Oklahoma State for the previous four years.
Day pointed to Chip Trayanum, who was recruited heavily by Ohio State out of Akron’s Archbishop Hoban High School before he chose to start his college career at Arizona State, as another example of a positive relationship in recruiting paying dividends in the portal when he opted to become a Buckeye last year.
“We recruited him not ever thinking that he would go to Arizona State and come back and then be playing for us this year,” Day said in December. “But that's why you always want to make sure you're building relationships and you're handling things the right way, even when it gets competitive and it gets emotional, when maybe something doesn't go exactly the way you think it should go or the way it's planned.”
Past relationships are far from a prerequisite to landing talented transfers. None of the five scholarship players who transferred to Ohio State during the winter – Davison Igbinosun, Ja’Had Carter, Tristan Gebbia, Victor Cutler Jr. and John Ferlmann – were offered by the Buckeyes out of high school or had previous connections to Ohio State’s coaching staff.
This summer’s transfer additions, though, served as evidence that those relationships can be an advantage for the Buckeyes when players Ohio State previously recruited choose to look for a new home. That doesn’t mean the Buckeyes will always be interested when a player they missed out on in high school chooses to enter the portal – only when it’s a player they’re confident fits their culture and current needs – but it is one more incentive for Ohio State to maintain good terms with prospects even when they commit to other schools.
