Big Ten Basketball: Way-too-early power rankings for 2020-21 season

Despite losing three of their top four scorers from a season ago, Ohio State will enter the 2020-21 season with fringe top 25 expectations. They will have a very different identity with Kaleb Wesson opting for the NBA Draft, but Duane Washington Jr. and CJ Walker return to stabilize the backcourt.

The frontcourt has some promising returners as well with Kyle Young and EJ Liddell, with all four giving Chris Holtmann some potential go-to options, although none have played that role as of yet.

Ohio State does have a hole on the wing and they tried to fill it with a pair of quality grad transfers. Abel Porter comes in from Utah State, but the big get for the Buckeyes came in the form of Harvard’s Seth Towns, who was the Ivy League Player of the Year in 2017-18. Injuries have kept him off the court for virtually two whole seasons but, when healthy, he could be one of Ohio State’s best players.

That leads to some of the unknown with this group. Washington and Towns are the likely candidates to replace Wesson as Ohio State’s top offensive options, but Washington can be inconsistent and Towns has yet to prove he can produce similar numbers against Big Ten-level competition on top of the injury concerns.

The Buckeyes will be fine from a depth perspective despite the losses of DJ Carton and Luther Muhammad to the transfer portal, and Holtmann is a good enough defensive coach that I trust they’ll be fine on that end. Finding enough offense in the post-Wesson era is the biggest key and question mark for them.