Back-to-back trips to Ohio State highlight busy fall schedule for T.J. Crumble
T.J. Crumble already had his unofficial visit scheduled to Ohio State. The borderline five-star forward in the class of 2026 was slated to visit the Buckeyes on Sept. 16 and watch a football game against Western Kentucky when another opportunity was presented.
Marcus Johnson, one of Crumble’s oldest friends and a fellow highly rated 2026 prospect from Northeast Ohio, was planning to take an unofficial visit to Ohio State on Sept. 9. So, too, was Dorian Jones, a top-30 guard in the 2025 class who will play alongside Crumble at Richmond Heights this season.
“It was like, why not go experience a football game?” Crumble said.
After enjoying a Sept. 9 win against Youngstown State at Ohio Stadium, Crumble was back one weekend later as part of a group of 2025 and 2026 recruits taking unofficial visits. This time, the 6-7, 215-pound forward said he got to tour the facilities, participate in a photo shoot wearing Buckeyes uniforms, spend time with coach Chris Holtmann and associate head coach Jake Diebler and get more of a feel for the Buckeyes.
“Ohio State is one of the teams that’s been recruiting me the heaviest as of now,” Crumble said. “One of about four schools. They’ve proven a lot of good points to me about being an Ohio kid and how it means more and what it could do for me even after the ball stops bouncing. We were with my family and coach Diebler and coach Holtmann in his office. He gave me a slideshow showing me what Ohio State’s really about and what it could do for me and what it means to be a Buckeye.”
This was a trip Crumble said he made with his family. The weekend prior, he spent time pregame hanging out on the sideline with Jones, Johnson and a few current Ohio State players including freshman forward Devin Royal.
“We talk about it all the time,” Crumble said. “It’s crazy. Especially me and Marcus, being in the same grade. Every time we’ve played together it’s unbelievable. It’s like we’ve had a connection from the start, especially since playing so young together. We talk about how it wasn’t able to happen in high school, but we always talk about the next level, us playing together and how crazy that could be.”
ESPN ranks Crumble as the No. 21 national prospect and the highest-rated player who’s not a five-star prospect. In Ohio, that puts him behind just Garfield Heights’ Johnson, who is ranked No. 12 nationally. 247Sports.com ranks Johnson and Crumble as four-star players and at Nos. 28 and 36 nationally, respectively.
Jones, a shooting guard, is ranked No. 28 nationally by 247Sports and No. 38 by ESPN. All three have scholarship offers from the Buckeyes and are being aggressively recruited by Ohio State.
“It’s been a crazy feeling,” Crumble said. “Marcus, we’ve been best friends really our whole lives. We played for the same AAU programs growing us. Us growing up, pushing ourselves, pushing each other, working out with each other, seeing our dreams coming true, it just means a lot, especially coming from our hometown school.”
Diebler is his primary recruiter for the Buckeyes.
“He’s a really personable person,” Crumble said. “We clicked automatically because the first time he watched me was actually going into my freshman year in the summer. He was actually one of the first major D-I schools that picked up interest in me. We’ve been carrying the relationship on since. I just started really talking heavily with coach Holtmann and we’ve built up a great relationship.”
After helping Cleveland Lutheran East win a Division III state title last season, Crumble has transferred to Richmond Heights, which won the Division IV title with a 29-0 record. In a 67-61 win against Ottawa-Glandorf, Crumble started and scored 12 points in 26:33 against the Titans. Colin White, a verbal commitment to Ohio State in the 2024 class, led his team with 18 points and added seven rebounds, five assists and two steals in the loss.
Crumble said he decided to transfer when he saw how well Richmond Heights’ players meshed with each other. He said he hit it off with Jones while the two were at a top-100 camp during the summer.
“Me seeing all the good players on the team being able to get theirs and the great ball movement, the great team chemistry, how hard they work, they never got tired,” Crumble said. “I was like, if I want to elevate my game I’ve gotta be somewhere that I can do that. That’s what really made me go to Richmond Heights.”
While he won’t team up with Johnson, this year they’ll face each other when Garfield Heights hosts Richmond Heights on Dec. 31, one day after Ohio State plays West Virginia at Cleveland’s Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse.
“It’s always a good game when we play against each other,” Crumble said. “It always comes down to the wire.”
More immediately, Crumble has a number of unofficial visits set for the coming weeks. He’s “most likely” going to Texas A&M this weekend, Illinois on Oct. 6, Cincinnati on Oct. 14 and Ohio University on Oct. 28. The trip to see the Bearcats will be his second unofficial visit there. He has also taken an unofficial visit to Michigan State on Sept. 2 and is working on scheduling one to Notre Dame.
During the last few weeks, Crumble also said UCLA, Illinois, Cincinnati, Oklahoma, Rutgers and others have visited the Richmond Heights gym. He’s primarily being recruited as an inside-out wing, he said, and is looking for a few things out of his future school.
“(I’m looking for) a college that truly believes in me as a person and a player and that they can make me a better person even after the ball stops bouncing so that I can still be a successful person after basketball,” he said.
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Why did T.J. Crumble visit Ohio State on consecutive weekends?
