Ohio State basketball: E.J. Liddell was hospitalized with the flu

The Ohio State basketball team got its best win of the season last night when they took down Illinois. It looked like it was going to slip away in the second half, but they were still able to pull it out. They did so with another strong game from their best player, E.J. Liddell.

Liddell finished the game with 21 points on 7/15 shooting. He was questionable coming into the game because of a bout with the flu. No one knew how serious of a bout it was until Chris Holtmann addressed it in his postgame press conference.

In that press conference, Holtmann mentioned that Liddell had been briefly hospitalized because of the sickness. That means between when the Buckeyes won on Monday and they played Thursday night, Liddell was in the hospital at some point dealing with the flu.

This truly is a “flu game” for Liddell. To be that sick and yet play so well against one of the best teams in the country is remarkable. You could see how tired Liddell was too. He wasn’t running up and down the floor with the same juice he normally does. He was just giving it his all for his team.

It’s performances like that that make Liddell so lovable for the fans. He cares about winning and his teammates so much that he wasn’t going to sit on the sidelines. The Ohio State basketball team needed him too. Without him on the floor, they don’t win this game.

Despite still clearly feeling the effects of his sickness, Liddell played the most minutes of anyone on the team with 35. Holtmann knew how much the Buckeyes needed him on the floor, and Liddell wasn’t going to sit on the bench voluntarily down the stretch.

Ohio State has four games left on the season, all of them winnable. They play unranked teams and only play one of them on the road. With this win, only Wisconsin and Purdue are ahead of them in the standings, and they play each other still. The Buckeyes still have a chance to win a Big Ten title.