Ohio State basketball will take on the Cincinnati Bearcats, led by Wes Miller, in a public exhibition game Friday. The proceeds will go to local mental health providers and charities.
The original game was a request by Dayton head coach Anthony Grant, but Jake Diebler, the Ohio State head coach, is set to take it a step further in the future.
Diebler, who will be at Cincinnati’s Fifth Third Arena Friday, spearheaded the idea of having Xavier, Dayton, Cincinnati and Ohio State all play in an exhibition event to benefit the local community.
“It was a collaborative effort for sure to get the conversations going, but it was Jake’s idea to get all four programs on the same page. To me that’s the thing that deserves a lot more credit, because that’s not easy to do,” Miller said via The Columbus Dispatch’s Adam Jardy.
The four programs are the most high-profile collegiate teams in Ohio, and having an event that puts them all together, especially given the rivalry between Xavier and Cincinnati already, should sell tickets easily.
The goal is to benefit the community, specifically the basketball community, and bring an event that gets fans in the doors and excited for the season that is to come.
Diebler reiterated that as well.
“Being the head coach at Ohio State, I believe you have a responsibility to keep pushing the basketball community to grow and anything we can do to help that in our state is important,” he said.
The impact these games have is great, and the likelihood something like this becomes a reality seems increasingly high, just not for this immediate season given we’re just weeks away.
