Kyle Young Unlikely to Play in Big Ten Championship

Here's what head coach Chris Holtmann had to say about Young after Saturday's win over Michigan.

Ohio State senior forward Kyle Young has been the heartbeat of the Buckeyes all year. There is not a tougher, grittier player on the team and it's easy to sense how much he cares about the program when you watch him play.

His passion for Buckeye basketball is why it's so disappointing that he is unlikely to play in Sunday's Big Ten championship game.

“I don’t anticipate him being available tomorrow,” head coach Chris Holtmann told the media after the game. “As far as beyond that, it’s very much he’s being evaluated day-to-day.”

There's no way Holtmann's team would have made it this far without Young.

He referenced that the team FaceTime called Young as soon as the game ended and they got back into the locker room.

“He was in great spirits, as you’d expect,” Holtmann said. “We had his jersey hanging in the locker room, and our social media team did an unbelievable job. They put the jersey that got ripped last year in the hallway out here, they put it up on the screen, a picture of it. So it was a constant reminder of a guy who really does care about this rivalry.”

The Buckeye senior suffered a concussion early in the second half of Friday's quarterfinal win over Purdue. After scoring a career-high 18 points in the first half against the Boilermakers, Young was accidentally elbowed in the head in the middle of the paint. 

He was diagnosed with his second concussion in the last three weeks, after he missed the Michigan State game in late February with the same diagnosis.

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