Ohio State basketball: What to make of D.J. Carton’s post

Former Ohio State basketball point guard D.J. Carton had a very interesting Instagram post a couple of days ago. Should you believe what he said about his leaving?

Last year’s Ohio State basketball squad was on a roll at the end of the season. It’s a shame that they never got a chance to see just how good they really were. That was no thanks to D.J. Carton, who left the team in the middle of the season as a freshman.

I’ve waited a couple of days to write about this because I wanted to gather my thoughts about everything that has happened, and I wanted to gather additional information about the situation. Now that I have done both, here is what we know about everything.

Carton was a big-time recruit out of Iowa. He was part of a recruiting class that was supposed to help the Buckeyes have a deep run in the NCAA tournament. He showed promise early, eventually getting up to 24 minutes a game. Carton only ended up playing 20 games though.

Carton left in the middle of the season to attend to “mental health issues.” Ohio State coach Chris Holtman immediately came out and supported Carton and said that the entire university was behind him. He offered any resources that he and the university could possibly offer.

Mental health issues are not something to be dismissed. Anyone who has any issues that they need to work through should get all of the help that they need. Everyone at Ohio State, including most of the fans, supported Carton in every way they could.

Now comes the way Carton dismissed his very short time at Ohio State. Carton posted on Instagram a few days ago about why he left after someone asked him to. He said “Last time I’m sayin sum bout this…but they ain’t “have room for me”.

When a fan said that if that’s how it went down then that really sucks, he replied “I had no intentions of leaving…still Ohio and my boys gon get _ done”. Because of that profanity, we can’t post the screenshots of the post in this article.

Is that what Ohio State really told Carton?

Did Ohio State really tell Carton that there was no room left for him? Did they really decide that they no longer had use for him? Carton seems to imply that the Buckeyes simply no longer wanted a 5-star recruit on their team. That seems insane for anyone to do.

Why would Ohio State want to get rid of one of the only two true point guards that they had on their team? Carton was supposed to help this team go deep into the tourney. He was the key to the Buckeye’s success not just now, but in the future as well.

Something else has to be at work here. Carton has now moved on to Marquette and only played 20 games in Columbus. Holtman and his staff did nothing but support Carton and do what’s best for him. It seems that he is doing anything but returning the favor.

Only two members of the 2019 recruiting class remain, and those are Ibrahima Diallo and E.J. Liddell. Because so many players have left the program, there is a small chance that something happened behind the scenes that we will never know about. But right as it stands now, this is a bad look for Carton on his way to a new school.