Ohio State vs Cincinnati Exhibition Game Recap: Bearcats Rally for 79-68 Outdoor Win

Our ohio state vs cincinnati exhibition game recap begins somewhere no basketball game belongs. Wednesday afternoon in Mason, Ohio — warm for October, sun glaring off everything — the Buckeyes and Bearcats tipped off on a court rolled out over Center Court at the Lindner Family Tennis Center. Yes, the tennis place. Both head coaches in sunglasses. For the first 30 minutes it looked like Ohio State would cruise out of there with an easy exhibition win. Then the second half started, and Cincinnati made it very clear: exhibition or not, this was a game you could lose.

Final: Cincinnati 79, Ohio State 68. The Bearcats flipped a halftime deficit into an 11-point win in the CareSource Invitational — part of an outdoor doubleheader with Dayton and Xavier playing later that night — by outscoring the Buckeyes 49-33 after the break. Tylen Riley went for a game-high 23, with 18 of those coming in the second half. Tyler Tejada added 17. A nine-point Ohio State lead turned into an 11-point Cincinnati win, and honestly it wasn't that close at the end.

Basketball on a Tennis Court

Sounds like a gimmick. It wasn't. The CareSource Invitational put four of Ohio's high-major programs — Ohio State, Cincinnati, Dayton, Xavier — on one outdoor court, with the whole thing raising money and awareness for mental health and suicide prevention. The Lindner Family Tennis Center finished a $260 million campus overhaul back in August 2025. Wednesday was the first time basketball had ever been played on the 40-acre site.

And the conditions were flat-out weird. Sun so bright both coaches never took the shades off. Ohio State shot straight into it in the second half. Anything from outside the paint had to fight the wind too. A 3 p.m. tip meant the glare kept shifting as the afternoon went on. You could see both coaching staffs basically throw the practice charts out — and man, did both teams shoot like it.

Buckeyes in Control Early

For the first 30 minutes, this looked like Ohio State's game to win. The Buckeyes led 35-30 at halftime and held the lead for 22 consecutive minutes, stretching from the middle of the first half to inside the 10-minute mark of the second. At one point the advantage reached nine points, and with about 10 minutes left Ohio State was up 56-49 and appeared to be in control.

Junior guard John Mobley Jr. did most of the early damage — 15 points, 10 before halftime. Best shot of the afternoon? Mobley, stepback three, staring right into the sun. Nothing but net, 49-42, 13:36 to go. Amare Bynum brought the juice inside too — at one point he snatched a loose ball and threw it down to make it 54-49 with 11:36 left.

The freshmen got their moments too. Prized recruit Anthony Thompson — the McDonald's All-American from nearby Lebanon, Ohio, and the preseason Big Ten freshman of the year — made his public debut in a Buckeye uniform just one interstate exit from his hometown. Five-star freshman LJ Smith got a clean look from the right wing early in the second half when fifth-year senior Jimmie Williams pushed the ball and kicked it out with Ohio State up eight. It was exactly the shot Ohio State's offense is designed to create. Smith bricked it. As it turned out, so did almost everyone else.

The Collapse: 30-12 Over the Final 10 Minutes

What happened next is the part Jake Diebler's staff will be watching on film. Leading 56-49, Ohio State went cold at exactly the wrong time. Cincinnati scored seven straight to tie the game, capped by a Tyler Tejada putback of his own miss, and then kept going. A 19-6 Bearcat run, finished off by two Tylen Riley free throws with 4:08 left, made it 68-62. From there Cincinnati never looked back, outscoring the Buckeyes 30-12 over the final 10 minutes.

The numbers tell the story of a team that could not buy a basket. Ohio State finished 4-of-23 from three-point range — 17.4 percent — and the misses were not all contested. Diebler was blunt afterward: "We are a much better shooting team than 4-for-23, and I don't know how many airballs we had." He added that the staff felt the team generated quality looks: "I thought we manufactured some great looks, some wide-open looks. We wanted to shoot the right shots." The problem, as the afternoon made clear, was that the right shots for Ohio State's regular-season offense were often the wrong ones in these conditions.

Cincinnati was barely better from deep at 4-for-19, but the Bearcats solved the problem the old-fashioned way: they went inside. UC outscored Ohio State 48-32 in the paint and won the rebounding battle 45-35. When the threes would not fall for either team, Cincinnati had an answer and Ohio State did not.

Riley and Tejada Take Over

If there is a single reason Cincinnati won this game, it is the second-half takeover by its backcourt. Tylen Riley scored 18 of his game-high 23 points after halftime, and Tyler Tejada scored 15 of his 17 in the final 20 minutes. Center Jayden Hastings chipped in 16 points and six rebounds in just over 21 minutes of work.

"It was Tyler Tejada, Tylen Riley and Jayden," UC head coach Jerrod Calhoun said afterward. "That was really good basketball for a big portion of that second half." Riley, for his part, pointed to the roster's depth: "It can be anybody's night anytime. Myles Colvin went out early (injured). MJ (Collins) is out. We have a lot of threats. This is a dangerous team."

The sequence that flipped the game for good came with 8:21 left. Tejada, who had just two points at halftime, scored five straight to pull Cincinnati even at 56, then drew a fourth foul on Ohio State's Andrija Jelavic while converting inside to give the Bearcats a 58-56 lead — their first lead since it was 9-7. Ohio State briefly fought back to tie it at 62 on two Mobley free throws with 5:37 left, but Cincinnati had all the momentum and closed it out.

Injury Scares on Both Sides

The box score will not show it, but both teams left Mason holding their breath at different moments. Cincinnati's Myles Colvin tumbled out of bounds in the first half and played only 2:41, finishing with two points. The move was precautionary, and Calhoun said afterward that Colvin is expected to practice Friday. Javontae Campbell watched in a walking boot.

The scarier moment belonged to Ohio State. With 2:16 left, junior guard Justin Pippen — the Cal transfer expected to play a major role in the backcourt — drove hard, drew contact, and hit the floor heavily. He had his left ankle and foot examined by the training staff and watched the rest of the game from the bench. In an exhibition in early October, there is no reason to risk anything, but Pippen's health bears watching as the Buckeyes move toward their second exhibition against Butler on October 25.

What This Actually Means

Let's be real about what an October exhibition is worth. Zero, in the standings. Experimental lineups, circus conditions, and neither team showed anything close to its real playbook — Cincinnati ran 11 guys heavy minutes. Still. Exhibitions tell you things, and this one told us a few.

For Ohio State, the concern is not the shooting percentage — no team shoots 17 percent from three in a real gym, and Diebler is right that this roster is far better than that. The concern is what happened when the shots stopped falling: the Buckeyes had no counter. Cincinnati pounded the paint and the glass; Ohio State, shooting into the sun, kept firing from outside and got buried on the boards. Against Big Ten frontcourts, that formula will not survive November.

The free-throw shooting deserves a mention too. The game featured 50 combined fouls and 68 free throws, and Ohio State went just 20-for-36 (55.6 percent) from the stripe. In a tight Big Ten game, that is the difference between winning and losing.

For Cincinnati, this was a genuinely encouraging afternoon. The Bearcats entered the season 36th in Bart Torvik's projections — solid, but a tier below Ohio State at 17th — and they beat the Buckeyes by going through them physically in the second half. Calhoun, in his tenure leading the program, got a road-map win: when the perimeter game deserts you, win the paint and win the glass.

The Rivalry Context

They don't play often, but when they do it matters. Cincinnati beat Ohio State in the 1961 and 1962 national title games — that's still the whole rivalry in one sentence. The modern series picked back up in 2018: Ohio State opened at Cincinnati's renovated Fifth Third Arena — first on-campus meeting since 1921 — and the Buckeyes took that one plus the return game at the Schott the next year.

Lately, though, the exhibitions have belonged to the Bearcats. Cincinnati took the October 2024 charity exhibition 80-62. Wednesday makes it two straight preseason wins over the Buckeyes — neither one counts, both of them sting a little.

What's Next

Both teams have more preseason work ahead. Cincinnati faces another Big Ten opponent, Illinois, on October 17. Ohio State returns to Columbus to host Butler in an exhibition on October 25 before the games start counting for real — the Buckeyes open the regular season November 2 at BYU in Salt Lake City.

Diebler, in his third full season leading the program, has a roster blending returning starters Mobley and Bynum with transfers like Pippen, Williams, Curtis Givens, and Jelavic, plus a freshman class headlined by Thompson. Wednesday was the first public look at how those pieces fit. The fit was promising for 30 minutes and messy for 10. That is exactly what October basketball is for — finding out which is which before November arrives.

Watch the video below for a look at how the Lindner Family Tennis Center was transformed into an outdoor basketball venue for this one-of-a-kind event.

 

For more on the game, see the Columbus Dispatch live coverage from Mason, the Cincinnati Enquirer's recap of the Bearcat comeback, and Eleven Warriors' full box score breakdown. And check out our Ohio State vs Maryland football preview for this weekend's gridiron action.