Video: Ohio State coach Jake Diebler talks roster, offseason and more
First full offseason press conference from Ohio State men’s basketball coach Jake Diebler at Value City Arena on June 10, 2024.
Jake Diebler’s first coaching staff is larger but less expensive than the last one Ohio State put together in Chris Holtmann’s final season with the program.
In his first full season as men’s basketball coach, Diebler will be surrounded by a five-person coaching staff thanks to an NCAA rule change that took effect before the 2023-24 season. Along with associate head coach Joel Justus and assistants Talor Battle, Dave Dickerson, Luke Simons and Jamall Walker, Diebler’s coaching staff will receive a total of $4,105,000 this year, according to documents obtained by the Dispatch through a public records request.
That’s more than $700,000 less than the total the five-man coaching staff will make in 2023-24. Led by Holtmann’s $3.5 million salary, a bench featuring Diebler as associate head coach, along with Brandon Bailey, Mike Netti and Jack Owens, received $4,835,000.
With his move from associate to head coach, Diebler’s salary increased from $500,000 to $2.5 million, but is still a million dollars less than what Holtmann earned in his seventh season with the program. And while two of Diebler’s coaches will each make at least $400,000, the larger staff will make less on average than last year’s coaches, and no assistant earned as much as Diebler did last year.
Justus tops this year’s list of assistant coaches with a salary of $425,000, ahead of Walker at $400,000. Justus began his career as an assistant coach at Elon in 2004 and most recently spent two years at NC State with stops at Kentucky and Arizona State, while Walker began as a high school coach in 2000 and spent the last four years at Grand Canyon, with stops at Illinois, Arizona and Ohio, among other schools.
Although coaching staffs can now consist of five players, only three of them are allowed to serve as outside scouts. For Diebler, that list includes Justus, Walker and Battle, with the latter set to make $300,000. Battle, Penn State’s all-time leading scorer, began coaching at his alma mater in 2020 and then spent three years at Northwestern. He was the final coach hired to complete the 2024-25 staff.
Dickerson and Simons complete the staff and will make $295,000 and $185,000, respectively. For Dickerson, who was a member of Thad Matta’s Ohio State staff from 2010-17 before becoming head coach at USC Upstate, this represents a raise from what he earned both as head coach and during his previous time with the Buckeyes.
During the 2016-17 season, Dickerson earned $281,116 before being let go in June of that year when Matta was fired. After a year out of the industry, Dickerson took over as head coach at USC Upstate, where he remained until the end of the 2023-24 season. Before joining Diebler’s staff as its first coach, Dickerson earned $210,892 as the Spartans’ head coach.
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Simons has an international background and has served as director of basketball operations at the College of Charleston (two years), Boston College (one year) and Baylor (two years) for the past five seasons. This is his first year as a full-time college assistant coach.
“Putting together a coaching staff is like building a team in a lot of ways,” Diebler said in June when asked about putting together his coaching staff. “You look for strengths, weaknesses and how they complement each other. Chemistry is really, really important. There was certainly a lot that went into that.”
Last season, Owens was paid $375,000, Netti $250,000 and Bailey $210,000. Owens and Bailey have joined Holtmann’s team at DePaul. Netti’s next move has not been announced.
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