Talor Battle to Join Buckeyes Men’s Basketball as Assistant Coach

On Monday, Ohio State Buckeyes men’s basketball coach Jake Diebler announced the addition of a new assistant coach on his staff.

Former Penn State and Northwestern assistant coach Talor Battle will join Diebler in Columbus to serve in the same capacity.

“Talor has great experience in the Big Ten both as a player and as a coach and I’m excited to welcome him to the Buckeye family,” said head coach Jake Diebler. “He is elite at player development which is evident by the success Northwestern has had the past couple of seasons. He has the ability to recruit at a high level and knows what it takes to be successful in this conference. I’ve known Talor for quite a while and I’m looking forward to working alongside him as we take the next step as a program.”

Battle was a standout point guard at Penn State – where he is still the program’s all-time scoring leader with 2,213 career points – and named a 2011 AP honorable mention All-American. He led the Nittany Lions to the 2009 NIT championship and received All-Big Ten Tournament Team honors in 2011 when Penn State reached the Big Ten Tournament and its first NCAA tournament appearance in over a decade.

Battle is one of just two players to lead the Nittany Lions in scoring in four consecutive seasons, and was the first Penn State player to earn All-Big Ten first-team honors twice.

After college, Battle played professional basketball overseas for seven years before beginning his coaching career with the Nittany Lions as an assistant in 2020-21.

Battle then moved to Northwestern for three seasons from 2021-23, where last season, he helped the Wildcats finish second in the Big Ten for the first time since 1958-59 and earn an NCAA Tournament berth for just the second time in program history.