When Zed Key walked straight off the court and into the locker room at the Schottenstein Center following a shoulder injury on Thursday, the Buckeyes were in trouble.
Who else could bang down low with 7-foot-4 Purdue center Zach Edey, clog the lane and gobble up his team-leading average of 7.8 rebounds? Felix Okpara stands 6-foot-11 and had already proven to be an electric shot blocker at the college level, but he’s only a true freshman who had all of 18 minutes of Big Ten experience under his belt at that point.
Ohio State lost the game after all, but Key’s absence wasn’t as big a factor as one might’ve assumed.