Those in Columbus who have paid attention to Ohio State hoops the past several years know the deal with Duane Washington Jr.
They have an understanding of his unlimited self-confidence, boundless energy and constant positivity. They’ve heard about his relationship with head coach Chris Holtmann whom he loves yet also has had a tendency to drive crazy. They’ve seen him develop as a player from a gunner without a conscience or a bone in his body telling him to pass into a multi-faceted combo guard who’s an increasingly efficient three-level scorer and can run the show with the ball in his hands. He’s been at the center of heartbreaking losses this season when he missed shots down the stretch, and he has put together masterful performances, like when he most recently dropped a career-high 32 points on Illinois in Sunday’s Big Ten tournament championship game.
The story of Washington has, if anything, never once been boring or uneventful. However, around the nation he still largely remains an unknown commodity.
Sure, he played at high-profile Sierra Canyon High School in California – which Bronny James attends – as a senior. Yes, his father had a short stint in the NBA and his uncle is former point guard Derek Fisher. But he was a three-star recruit when he arrived at Ohio State, didn’t become a full-time starter until this season, made nearly as many maddening plays as he did impactful plays for a while in Columbus and hasn’t floated onto NBA radars. Outside of Big Ten country, especially without a postseason last year, there hasn’t been a lot of reason to know about him.
Washington can – and will try to – change that over the next few weeks.
With his high-scoring nature, propensity to try tough shots and ability to hit them, affection for heat checks and emotion coursing through his game, he’s the kind of player who people see catch fire during March Madness and don’t soon forget about. If he can maintain the level of play he reached in the conference tournament when he averaged 23 points across four games, he’s the type of score-first guard with a big personality built for NCAA tournament fame.
Within the next month, Washington has a chance to make himself a household name in college basketball. And given the importance of the junior guard to Ohio State, it’s tough to imagine this team making a run through the NCAA tournament without that – to some degree – becoming a reality.
“I hope people realize he's a heck of a kid and a heck of a player,” Holtmann said over the weekend. “It's been well-documented how much I love him and sometimes our relationship has its moments. I haven't really looked at it like that. I think Duane understands, he's really focused in the moment. We're going to have a huge challenge. We’re going to have a huge challenge in our opening NCAA tournament game. I think that's all his focus right now. I think if he gets off of anything else other than that, it can be really a dangerous place to go for a kid.
“But from a coach’s perspective, listen, I hope he continues to perform at a high level because I want him to get everything he's earned.”
The path to Washington – as Holtmann put it – getting what he has earned starts on Friday with Oral Roberts. Four wins would put his Buckeyes into the Final Four.
To get there, though, Washington will have to out-duel a number of high-profile, productive guards.
In the opening round, the Eagles feature Max Abmas, college basketball's leading scorer at 24.2 points per game who shoots 48.4 percent from the floor, 43.3 percent from 3 and 89.9 percent from the foul line. The moment the 6-foot-1 sophomore crosses midcourt, he’s a threat to launch.
If the Buckeyes win, as expected, and happen to get Florida in Round 2, they'd see 6-foot-5 guard Tre Mann who earned first-team All-SEC honors while putting up 16 points per game as a sophomore. A Sweet 16 bid would likely mean Ohio State faces Arkansas, which features potential lottery pick guard Moses Moody, or Big 12 Newcomer of the Year Mac McLung, the 6-foot-2 Georgetown transfer leading Texas Tech in scoring. An Elite Eight showdown with top-seeded Baylor could await, meaning the Buckeyes would battle arguably college basketball’s best backcourt led by first-team All-American guard Jared Butler. Then, perhaps Illinois’ Ayo Dosunmu, Houston’s Quentin Grimes, West Virginia’s Miles McBride or Oklahoma’s Cade Cunningham would be next in the Final Four.
Simply put, Ohio State’s path through the NCAA tournament has a chance to pit its backcourt against a high-level guard with a significant track record in every single round. For somebody like Washington, with the eyes of March Madness upon him, individual matchups at the collegiate level don’t get much more high-profile than these.
“Duane's a primetime player,” E.J. Liddell said a few days ago. “I mean, y'all seen him on a night-in, night-out basis.”
The rest of the country’s about to see him, too, and many of them will have their eyes trained on him for the first time.
Washington found a groove in the Big Ten tournament, which he compared to an AAU event due to the controlled environment and all games played in one location. Now, he’ll try carry that stretch of strong play into the NCAA tournament, taking Ohio State as far as he can.
“I've just been believing in myself, man, at the highest level,” Washington said on Tuesday. “So have my coaches and my teammates, my family, my support system. It's always been like that for me. I've just been doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over again. I ain't changed nothing up. I've just been sticking with it and understanding that there's a process with this basketball thing. You've got to trust it and you've got to fully give yourself into it, and once you do that, you see results. You see greatness slowly, slowly coming into fruition. And that's all I want as a player. That's all I want for us as a team, for the coaches, to be great.
“At this point, I'm just trying to do everything I can in my power to help win basketball games and just keep surviving and advancing.”
