WASHINGTON — As Ohio State played the final seven games of its turbulent 2015-16 season, Jae’Sean Tate sat on the bench and watched with his left arm in a sling.
Tate had surgery to repair a torn labrum in late February — he also tore his right labrum as a high school senior — and could not be on the court as the Buckeyes attempted to make a late-season push for a NCAA tournament berth. But without him, Ohio State simply wasn’t the same team and the Buckeyes stumbled down the stretch to miss the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2008.
It was difficult, no doubt, for Tate to sit and watch. But as it turns out, Ohio State’s emotional leader gained a totally new view of things watching from the sidelines.
“It sucked, it did. But looking back, it also had some plus to it,” Tate said Thursday at Big Ten Media Day. “I got to see the game from a whole different perspective than I ever had before. I saw things sitting on the bench that I don’t see when I was playing and I tried to help my teammates along with what I saw to help them.
“It hurt just because we were probably one or two games away from being in the tournament, that hurt a little bit, but it also made me and my teammates hungrier for this year.”
When last season ended, Tate still had to wait several months before he was cleared for any sort of basketball activities. That was difficult, too, having the game he played for so long taken away for an extended period of time, but Tate’s teammates and coaches said the junior forward did everything he possibly could to return as quickly as possible.
“He handled it probably the best way anyone could,” teammate Keita Bates-Diop said. “He did everything right, he didn’t try to come back early, he didn’t do anything to make things worse. That’s how you wanted him to handle that.”
“Yeah, you’re going to get bummed just because you can’t play. He loves the game just as much as anyone I know, but he powered through it and he’s back now.”
Added Ohio State head coach Thad Matta: “From Jae’Sean’s standpoint, he was in every single day doing exactly what he was supposed to do. Sometimes, it’s those exercises that don’t look like they’re doing much because they’re working one small muscle in the shoulder or whatever, but he was as diligent as I’ve seen in terms of his rehab.”
The hope now, of course, is Tate returns to being his old self.
An undersized forward, Tate earned a reputation over his first two years in the Big Ten as one of the conference’s toughest and hardest-playing players. He’s a difficult matchup for opposing big guys because, at 6-foot-4, he’s quicker and has a unique skillset for a forward. Defensively, he can guard a number of different positions.
Before his injury a season ago, Tate averaged 11.7 points and a team-high 6.4 rebounds per game. He’s only recently started to get back into the swing of things as Ohio State is now 10 practices in, but Tate said he’s pleased with where’s he’s at one month before the season begins.
“Every day I feel that I’ve gotten better,” he said. “I’m starting to make a lot more shots, a lot more reads and I’m happy with where I am.”
A hometown product, Tate is leaving out his dream playing for Ohio State. The last six-plus months have no doubt been difficult.
Injuries are never a good thing for any player, but Tate said he has taken the good that comes with them along with the bad.
And, as a result, he views things in a completely different fashion.
“Not being able to help my teammates out, not being able to be out there knowing I could make an impact, that really was a low point,” Tate said. “But also, when the season was over, knowing I wasn’t able to work on my game and improve what I needed to work on, that was very humbling.
“But with that, there were ups too. I got the opportunity to do an internship, network and meet new people and some high powers that might help me out one day when the ball stops bouncing.”
