Hey. When you get a minute, give me a call.
It wasn’t just the message that got the attention of Ohio State women’s basketball coach Kevin McGuff – it was the sender. When the text message from Buckeyes football coach Ryan Day reached his cell phone roughly six years ago, McGuff made more than a minute and gave Day a call.
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What happened next led to McGuff landing Ohio’s 2026 Ms. Basketball a year early. Sydney Mobley, who is a freshman on this year’s Ohio State team, was in sixth grade when she turned a few heads at a recreation center in Columbus.
Big Walnut’s Sydney Mobley cuts the net following her team’s 67-54 win over Worthington Kilbourne in a Division II regional final March 6 at Morral Ridgedale.
It turned out that Day’s father-in-law, Stan Spirou, was also in the gym alongside Day’s son, RJ.
“He said, ‘There’s a girl out here who is crushing people at the rec center,’ and she was in like the sixth grade at that time,” McGuff said Sept. 21, about an hour before his team’s first official practice of the season. “I tracked down some information after that and that’s how we started recruiting her.”
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Now listed at 6-foot-2, Mobley capped a three-year prep career by averaging 20.3 points, 9.6 rebounds, 2.5 steals, 2.3 assists and 1.5 blocks at Big Walnut while earning first-team all-state honors for the third consecutive year. A five-star prospect in the 2027 class, according to the 247Sports.com composite, she reclassified, graduated early, joined Ohio State at the end of the summer and is now preparing for her first collegiate season with the school that offered her a scholarship before she even got to high school.
McGuff said she will face an acclimation period as she gets used to playing at a higher level but that Mobley is expected to be a contributor this season. And for that, he owes at least a little bit of thanks to Ohio State’s football coach.
“He has mentioned maybe being our recruiting coordinator at some point,” McGuff said with a smile. “He’s probably got plenty of national championships and games to win still in football, but he may have a secondary career in recruiting for Ohio State women’s basketball.”
Adam Jardy can be reached at ajardy@dispatch.com, on Bluesky at @cdadamjardy.bsky.social, on Instagram at @cdadamjardy or on Twitter at @AdamJardy.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: How did Ohio State’s Ryan Day help Kevin McGuff land Sydney Mobley?
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