Ohio State football loses out on in-state recruit to Alabama

The Ohio State football team has been on a roll in the last couple of weeks on the recruiting trail. They have been getting solid recruits on both sides of the ball to come to Columbus. Recently, they have grabbed a couple of defensive linemen to add to the 2025 recruiting class.

Ohio State was hoping to grab another one on Wednesday. They have been recruiting in-state defensive lineman Justin Hill for quite a while. He is a four-star star recruit from Cincinnati. The Buckeyes would have loved to have gotten him and that would have capped their defensive line class.

Hill had some final schools he was choosing between, including Ohio State, Alabama, and Oregon. While Ohio State was hopeful that they could still land him, they didn't feel overly confident. They were right to do that because Hill decided to commit to Alabama instead.

The Buckeyes still have the best recruiting class in the country. They are up to 22 commits in the 2025 recruiting class. They already have five defensive linemen in the class. To be honest, they don't need any more defensive linemen for this class. One more would be the maximum number they would add.

Losing a recruit to Alabama is never fun, especially in the post-Saban era. Still, it could be worse than that. The Ohio State football team is still perfectly fine on the recruiting front. There are a couple of other high-level recruits that the Buckeyes are hoping to land.

Alabama is second in the recruiting rankings. Adding Hill helped close the gap a bit between them and Ohio State, but it's still a large gap. The Buckeyes would need to have a monumental collapse on the recruiting trail to not end the cycle with the best class in the country. They are in good shape.