Ohio State crushed Maryland 45-16, but that comfortable scoreboard covered up a problem Ryan Day can’t afford to ignore. Six starters were missing, and apparently, injuries weren’t the only reason. Day admitted that some unusual, non-football-related issues had disrupted his lineup, although he refused to explain exactly what happened. The Buckeyes got away with it against Maryland, but Indiana won’t be nearly as forgiving. With a top-five showdown looming in Bloomington, Ohio State could be walking into one of its biggest games of the season without a full-strength roster. And Day’s latest update did little to eliminate that concern.
Speaking on Monday’s Buckeye Roundtable show, the head coach offered some optimism but stopped short of guaranteeing that all six starters would return.
“ I don’t know if we’ll get them all back, but I’m hoping to get the majority of these guys back,” he said, via Eleven Warrior’s Dan Hope. “We’ll see how they come in tomorrow. It was kind of a strange week, with some strange things, a few non-football-related issues that popped up. So we just had to manage it the best we could. But yeah, I don’t think we’ll get all of them back, but we should get a good portion of them back for Indiana.”…