CJ Walker is still hurt. His torn ligaments in his right hand still hasn’t healed. He still feels pain. He still wears a splint when he plays.
Yet, he is playing.
On Jan. 23, Walker scored eight points in 24 minutes off the bench in a win at Wisconsin, and he hasn't missed any of Ohio State’s six games since. Two and a half weeks before that road victory, the Buckeyes had made what head coach Chris Holtmann called at the time a “collective” decision to sit him out indefinitely to rest. The hand injury that Walker initially suffered during a preseason intrasquad scrimmage had gotten to the point where it was affecting the fifth year senior point guard’s performance, and with the postseason only two months away, both the coach and player wanted to ensure he’d be in the right state of health by the time tournaments rolled around.
As it turns out, Walker could only stomach sitting out a little over two weeks.
“Some of that was a situation where he thought he might be able to be out for a little bit and manage it all right,” Holtmann said. “I think he just missed it so bad that he was like, ‘Hey, if I've got to come back a little bit early, I've got to come back a little bit earlier. I don't want to be out.’ I think everybody understands this is his last year. He's going to go on and play professionally after this. He wanted to play in every game. So I think he was balancing that with the normal health. And he had to get cleared by the doctor and reevaluated by the hand surgeon, all that. But once he got the OK, I think he was just anxious to get back.”
Holtmann, when Walker returned to the court, planned to gauge Walker’s ability to contribute based on his pain level. At this point, though, the fourth-year head coach has pretty much ceased asking.
Essentially, Walker’s hand injury in a holding pattern. Holtmann says it hasn’t gotten notably better since he returned, and the obvious hope is it won’t get any worse by playing. The coaches treat it like senior forward Kyle Young’s lower-leg pain, just “monitoring” it while simultaneously believing it won’t get back to 100 percent anytime soon.
“It won't fully heal until he can take four or five weeks off after the season,” Holtmann said on his 97.1 radio show this week. “I don't think it'll fully heal until then.”
Walker, two and a half weeks ago, added: “It's feeling really good. I'm still doing treatment after games. I'm still wearing my splint to make sure it's recovering to get all the way back to 110 percent. I feel really good, though, strengthening it each and every day. I'm (going to) just keep working on it, keep getting better, keep making plays for my team to win.”
Since returning, Walker has settled into a different role. A new role. A role Holtmann expects him to continue to play as long as he stays
He has essentially become Ohio State’s sixth man, coming off the bench instead of starting like he did in almost every prior game since transferring from Florida State a couple years ago.
For the most part, Walker hasn’t changed much at all from the player he was before the multi-week January layoff. His minutes have dipped a bit from 31.5 to 25.8, his shooting percentages from both inside the 3-point arc (33.3 to 40.7) and behind the arc (20 to 30) have ticked up somewhat since returning from the injury, and his steals per game have come close to doubling despite playing less (0.7 to 1.2). Importantly, he has also maintained a two-to-one assist-to-turnover ratio, still gets to the free-throw line at a similar rate to knock foul shots down at a 90-percent clip and gives Ohio State what Holtmann calls some “bite” defensively at the point of attack.
In three of the past four games, Walker has reached double-figures scoring, doing so for the first time since sitting out. He also had nine assists compared to one turnover versus Iowa.
“It's a credit to him that he's been able to kind of come back, assimilate to a group that was winning some games and also helped us continue to perform at a really high level,” Holtmann said. “He's given us some things on both ends that have been really good, but particularly it allows us to play more guys, it provides us another paint touch threat, another ball-handler and a guy at the point of attack defensively that can really help us. We need that from him. We don't have the ability collectively, outside of CJ and Meechie (Johnson), we've not shown the ability to put great pressure on the ball from our guards, and that's affected our defense some. He helps that.
“And then at the same time, I thought when he was out, there were some games where we clearly wore down, our ball-handling wore down. So just to have him back has been phenomenal.”
Barring any unforeseen setbacks, Walker plans to continue to play and Holtmann plans to continue to use him off the bench.
As the head coach put it, the point guard is in a “really good rhythm” right now, so there’s no use in changing things up for the goal of getting back to what it was like earlier in the season.
“He's been who he is,” Holtmann said. “He's still injured. His hand still bothers him. But he's managed to play well in spite of it.”
