Eight days ago, Duane Washington Jr. couldn’t hold back the emotion written across his body. Pacing along the baseline, he listened to CJ Walker and Kyle Young deliver their Senior Day remarks to the friends and families of Ohio State players and coaches strewn across the Schottenstein Center stands. He heard them say, almost pleadingly, that they wanted to get things turned around. Walker spoke to them directly, telling them they were going to “try to figure this out.”
It was, for all intents and purposes, the low point of the Buckeyes’ 2020-21 season.
Two weeks before, Ohio State had entered a mid-February weekend winning 10 of 11 games and rising to No.