It was a calm, cool Columbus night as Ryan Day closed up shop in his office at the unusually quiet Woody Hayes Athletic Center.
The in-season hustle that typically reverberated through the facility felt like a distant, fleeting echo. It was replaced by that kind of silence that's somehow ironically deafening, and it was in that moment Day turned his attention from the notes he had been taking to a shadow that moved across his open door.
"Hello?" He hooked the word as a question to the dark hallway outside his office. The only response came in the form of retreating footsteps that were headed toward the indoor practice facility.