Musa Jallow "Getting Squeezed" Out of Minutes for Buckeyes
There are only so many minutes to go around.
That might be an odd thing to consider right now for Chris Holtmann and the Ohio State Buckeyes, given how hampered his team has been by injuries this season. In many ways, it feels like OSU has had to play position-less basketball and put healthy bodies on the floor. It's made the job Holtmann and his staff have done all that much more impressive as they've got the Scarlet and Gray to a No. 13 national ranking.
But as the team has gotten a little bit healthier, one player that hasn't seen as many minutes is Musa Jallow. Musa was playing more than 22 minutes per game through the first seven games this year, but ever since he was ruled out for one game because of contact tracing, he hasn't approached anywhere near that kind of playing time. In fact, he only played two minutes last week between the Purdue and Wisconsin games.
So what gives?
“Musa's a tremendous young man and a good player, really good player,” Holtmann said. “He's still coming back from kind of the rust of being off for an entire offseason. Bottom line is you can't play everybody. The rotation gets trimmed. I wouldn't be doing my job if we were trying to play 12 guys and spread the minutes out. So you kind of got to commit to a group.
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"That could change, but that's part of it. We've played Gene (Brown) some of those minutes here, as well as Justin (Ahrens). Ultimately, somebody's going to get squeezed out. Whoever does get squeezed out has to stay ready because anything can change at any moment.”
Between Justin Ahrens emerging as a 3-point shooting star, plus C.J. Walker is back from a hand injury, Meechie Johnson is getting some run, Duane Washington and Justice Sueing have rarely come off the floor ... there just hasn't been a whole lot of room for Jallow lately.
Hopefully Jallow takes Holtmann's message to heart though, because he might be the most athletic player on the team. When he gets his chance, he could be a really good player.
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