Ohio State basketball to start on November 25th after all

The Ohio State basketball team has found another opponent to take the spot of Memphis after they pulled out of the tournament set in South Dakota.

Ohio State basketball will start on November 25th after all. They originally set to play Memphis on that date in South Dakota. Then the Buckeyes decided to pull out of the tournament that was set in South Dakota after it was moved from the Bahamas because of COVID concerns.

Chris Holtmann has found someone to fill that date. He announced that the Buckeyes will be playing Illinois State on a radio show in Columbus early Monday morning. That leaves the Buckeyes just nine days to prepare for this new opponent.

Having such a short time to prepare for a team like them shouldn’t be too hard. Basketball has a shorter turnaround than football anyway, so most teams are used to not having a lot of time to prepare for an opponent. This is no big deal for the Buckeyes.

The biggest deal will be for them to get healthy. They still have a couple of players that aren’t fully available yet. Musa Jallow is still recovering from ankle surgery that he had a year ago. Seth Towns is also still recovering from his knee injury that forced him to miss all of last year.

The good news is that it sounds like Jallow is very close to fully returning. According to Holtmann, he will be returning to practice in a full capacity next week. He missed all of last season due to that ankle injury. Towns will return much later though, perhaps as late as late December.

It’s good to see that we now have a firm date for the start of Buckeye basketball. It will be good to have both football and basketball going on at the same time.