After narrowly escaping with a 67-61 victory over Cleveland State last weekend, Ohio State now turns their attention to conference play, with the Purdue Boilermakers first up. An already undersized Buckeye squad will now face the task of winning games without E.J. Liddell, who has been arguably their best player thus far.
The 6-foot-7 sophomore led Ohio State in scoring (15.5 PPG) and rebounding (7.5 REB) through four games, but late last week it was announced Liddell would be out indefinitely due to illness, which would later be diagnosed as mononucleosis. On Monday afternoon, Chris Holtmann categorized Liddell’s situation as “day-to-day”, while saying that Seth Towns (knee) is “week-to-week”.