Jeremiah Smith, Caleb Downs, Sonny Styles, Carnell Tate and Max Klare Lead Ohio State’s Top Players Entering 2025 Season
Jeremiah Smith, Caleb Downs, Sonny Styles, Carnell Tate and Max Klare Lead Ohio State’s Top Players Entering 2025 Season
Ohio State doesn’t have a ton of proven stars entering the 2025 season, but it has no shortage of talented players.
That was reflected in the voting for this year’s first edition of the Buckeye 20, our year-round ranking of Ohio State’s 20 best players.
In news that will surprise no one, the Eleven Warriors unanimously agreed that Jeremiah Smith and Caleb Downs are Ohio State’s top two players. Smith received all but one first-place vote, with Kyle Jones – who outlined just how valuable Downs is to Ohio State’s defense in his most recent Film Study – giving Downs the other No. 1 vote.
There was a clear consensus on the rest of the top five, too, as all but one of the nine members of our voting panel ranked all three of Sonny Styles, Carnell Tate and Max Klare between the third and fifth spots on their ballots.
After that, however, the voting became far more varied. Seventeen different Buckeyes received at least one top-10 vote, and 30 different players received at least one top-20 vote.
The full results from our preseason Buckeye 20 vote can be found below. Each player received 20 points for a first-place vote, 19 points for a second-place vote, 18 points for a third-place vote and so on down to one point for a 20th-place vote, with 180 points being the maximum total any player could receive. (Note: The tie between Eddrick Houston and Brandon Inniss was broken by Houston receiving the highest individual-ballot ranking between the two.)
