Even though it’s football season, college basketball is just around the corner, with the Buckeyes tipping off on Nov. 3. There were a lot of roster changes for Ohio State heading into the 2025-26 season, and over the next couple of months we will be dropping one player preview per week to get you caught up on the current roster.
Name: Ivan Njegovan
Position: Center
Class: Sophomore
High School/Former School: Gimnazija Vladimira-Nazora
Hometown: Otocac, Croatia
Height: 7-foot-1
Weight: 250 pounds
Njegovan played in 21 games as a freshman, averaging 1.6 points and 1.5 rebounds per game. He was fairly efficient from the field in a small sample size, shooting 50 percent, but was only 13-for-26. He made two three-pointers as well, and recorded eight blocked shots.
Njegovan flashed early in the season against Evansville, recording seven points on 3-for-3 from the floor shooting, including a three-pointer.
Before signing with the Buckeyes, Njegovan had played for both KK Zadar and KK Bosco Zagreb of the Croatian Premier League. Njegovan joined KK Zadar for the 2023-24 season, where he averaged 7.4 points, 4.4 rebounds and 1.3 blocks per game. He shot 56 percent from the floor.
Njegovan was a late entry to the game of basketball, starting at the age of 16, when he joined the youth program of KK Zadar, one of Croatia’s premier basketball clubs. After eight games for Zadar, Njegovan transferred to KK Bosco Zagreb, where he played 20 games. At Bosco, Njegovan averaged 8.2 points, 4.8 rebounds and 1.6 blocks per game.
He was also a member of the Croatian U20 National Team that competed in the 2024 European Championship. In the tournament, he averaged 6.1 points and 6.6 rebounds over seven games. Njegovan finished the tournament with a huge game against Bulgaria, recording15 points, 16 rebounds and three blocks.
A lot of Njegovan’s role will be dependent on the health of Baylor transfer and current backup center, Josh Ojianwuna. Ojianwuna is coming off a torn ACL in February, and the timeline to return to competitive play is nine to 12 months, so his availability for the season is in question.
If Ojianwuna gets healthy in time for the season and can play, he will be the backup center, and he and starting center Christoph Tilly will take most of the minutes at the position, leaving only clean up duty for Njegovan.
If Ojianwuna does not get healthy in time for the season and has to medically redshirt, then Njegovan will take the majority of the backup center minutes, and play likely 10-15 minutes a game.
Njegovan showed flashes last season of his potential as a freshman, but he will need to take a significant jump to become the backup center the Buckeyes will need him to be. We see a lot of guys make the jump from their freshman to sophomore season, and this will be his first full offseason training, so it will be interesting to see what Njegovan can bring to this team.