Five-Day Turnaround Leaves Ohio State Needing To Quickly Recover Physically Ahead of NCAA Tournament

In the middle of last week, for one of the first times all season, Chris Holtmann sat in front of the virtual media and espoused positivity about Kyle Young’s health. The conversation about the senior forward this year had often gone to the lower-leg pain he has battled for years, and more recently the head coach had spoken about the concussion he suffered in February that led him to miss a late-season game. But on Wednesday, Holtmann said Young was “feeling good right now” and “everything’s fine there.”

That, of course, didn’t last long.

Young took an inadvertent elbow to the head from Trevion Williams during the second half of Ohio State’s overtime win against Purdue in the quarterfinals of the Big Ten tournament, stayed in the game for a few possessions, then exited to once again get evaluated. Eventually, he was diagnosed with a concussion, forcing him to sit out both the semifinal and championship games. The starting forward watched the Buckeyes beat Michigan on television, FaceTiming the team after the win, then was in the locker room to see the loss to Illinois on Sunday.

Where Young will be at 3 p.m. Friday is an unanswered question. Holtmann wasn’t ready in the aftermath of the championship defeat to declare whether or not he’ll be ready to go for the first-round NCAA tournament game against 15th-seeded Oral Roberts.

“I don't know yet on him, to be honest with you,” Holtmann said. “I don't, I don't know. And I'm not sure when we'll know specifically on him.”

Like the rest of the team, Young needs rest.

Almost certainly, the Buckeyes would have preferred playing on Saturday instead of Friday afternoon. Any extra days off would help a team that just wrapped up its fourth game in four days. But they don’t control the schedule, so they’ll have to be ready to go on a five-day turnaround.

“I think recovery's probably the most important thing right now, especially for guys that have played a lot of minutes each and every day against these great teams – Purdue, Minnesota, (Michigan) then today,” CJ Walker said. “It's just a really good, competitive thing, so guys are really banged up. So I feel like recovery's going to be really big for us going into March because we're going to need everybody to contribute at a high level. So, it's going to be really important. So, yeah, we're going to do as best as possible to try to recover.”

Two of the four conference tournament games went into overtime. Duane Washington Jr. understandably had told his teammates to view it like an AAU tournament.

A player-by-player minute count for those four days:

Duane Washington Jr: 148
E.J. Liddell: 137
Justice Sueing: 133
CJ Walker: 126
Seth Towns: 72
Musa Jallow: 69
Justin Ahrens: 58
Kyle Young 48
Zed Key: 42
Meechie Johnson: 13
Gene Brown: 3
Ibrahima Diallo: 1

The four who played 100-plus minutes – Washington, Liddell, Sueing and Walker – will be counted on for 30 or more minutes in every NCAA tournament game. Liddell’s conditioning has been a point of emphasis ever since he arrived on campus, and this turnaround will test him. Sueing's still battling a groin injury that required a procedure a week ago, and Walker has torn ligaments in his hand that have yet to heal.

Needless to say, the usage of these days between tournaments will be key for this team’s ability to continue playing what Holtmann called “some of our best basketball.”

“It's a good question,” Holtmann said. “Certainly not going to use it as an excuse, but we've got to get our medical staff and our team in a good place physically. We've got to get ourselves right. I think emotionally we'll bounce back. But we've got to get ourselves rested and right.

“It's priority No. 1 for us.”