Ohio State's Zed Key hopes for offseason growth while facing shoulder surgery
Zed Key wasn’t about to add insult to what would become a season-ending injury.
Situated on the left block in the opening minutes of a home game with No. 1 Purdue, the Ohio State center was attempting to box out the behemoth that is Zach Edey as Caleb Furst missed a free throw. When the 7-4 Edey reached over the 6-8 Key, the Buckeye came away from the contact holding his left shoulder and clearly in pain. Play continued, and as the ball made its way to Ethan Morton, Edey was unguarded near the elbow as Key stood under the basket and away from the action.
Morton saw Edey and fed him a pass. With pain coursing through his body, Key made a swipe at the big man before clearly getting out of (further) harm’s way.
“I tried to make a play and then I saw Zach Edey get the ball in the paint and I said, ‘Yeah, I’m not getting dunked on and hurt,’ ” Key said.
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Zed Key undergoing season-ending shoulder surgery
The pain was immediate, but the final outcome was not. Diagnosed with a left shoulder sprain, Key’s shoulder came out on the play, irrevocably altering the trajectory of both his and Ohio State’s seasons. Thursday, he will undergo surgery that will sideline him for 4-6 months after he missed the subsequent game, returned for the next 11 and then had to shut it down due to the persistent pain that would hamper his effectiveness and play a role in a string of 14 losses in 15 games for the Buckeyes.
Key said the surgery will be repairing his labrum but otherwise didn't know too many specifics.
"All the doctor terms? OK, cool. I don’t get into that," he said. "I don’t know what they’re talking about."
Now it’s a focus on the road to recovery for Key, who finishes the year having averaged career-best marks of 10.8 points and 7.5 rebounds in 24.8 minutes per game. Those totals, albeit largely in non-conference play, were gaudier before the injury. After averaging 13.4 points and 8.4 rebounds while shooting 69.8% on two-point field goals, those numbers dropped to 8.8, 7.2 and 46.3%, respectively, in 11 games with the injury and a heavy brace on the shoulder.
So, yes, it had an impact.
' You know you can do something but you’re not 100%': How Zed Key's injury affected his play
“I use my shoulders a lot to get the defender off my body,” Key said. “There’s a lot of jumping, grabbing rebounds, people going under your arms. I use my left hand a lot with jump hooks. Even with the brace on, it definitely affected it a lot because I knew I wasn’t 100% and the shots that were falling in the beginning of the year that I knew I could make, it just wasn’t falling.
“It goes back to that frustration standpoint. You know you can do something but you’re not 100%.”
Eventually, it hit a breaking point. During the second half of a 92-75 loss at Iowa on Feb. 16, Key grabbed at the shoulder after extending for a rebounding and feeling pain but was able to continue playing – until he took a shot to the shoulder from Iowa’s Filip Rebraca on the right block inside Carver-Hawkeye Arena.
With 15:46 left to play and the Hawkeyes ahead 60-45, Key subbed out for the final time of the season.
“It was tough,” he said. “Obviously I’ve been battling through it. It was like I could keep pushing through it, but where it was at the Iowa game, there was no reason to keep going. I had to think about it for a couple days. I took some long, hard thinking and decided to shut it down.”
It was his first season as a somewhat featured cog in the Ohio State offense, but coach Chris Holtmann said it remains to be seen if Key can play a full season while being as productive as he was prior to the injury.
“He’s had moments later in the season (in prior years) where his production has dropped off and some of that has been his conditioning,” the coach said. “My challenge for him was to finish this well. I do think he was on a good trajectory before the injury. I think he had good moments, but there’s still a lot for Zed to grow in. He has to get better in a lot of areas.
“He knows that. I think he can.”
Zed Key’s offseason development will be impacted by surgery
As the season has progressed, Holtmann has stated his belief that in time Key and 6-11 freshman Felix Okpara will be able to coexist on the court instead of being either/or players.
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That remains the hope for 2023-24 even though Key will not have a full offseason to further develop his perimeter skills.
“He will not have a full summer, but I still think we can get him to where he needs to get to get to play those two guys together, I really do,” Holtmann said. “(Key) had some really good moments this year and some really good growth opportunities, but this will be a critical offseason for him. It’ll be somewhat limited, but it’s still going to be a very critical offseason.”
Key entered the season as the starting center with the freshman Okpara backing him up, and the offseason was spent trying to add a 3-point shot to his arsenal. He scored the first points of the season on a shot from deep, the first 3-point attempt of his career, and prior to the injury had gone 6 for 19 (31.6%) from deep.
In order to be able to play power forward alongside Okpara, Key will have to continue to change his game and become more perimeter-oriented. It’s a transformation he’ll have to make despite having an abbreviated offseason that will rob him of crucial time for development.
“Obviously (I want to) continue to expand my game,” he said. “Shoot more 3s. I don’t know how many I made this year, or how many I shot, but just keep expanding from that. Faster footwork. Better conditioning. Same things I said last year. Just keep improving in it, keep growing my game versatile, keep expanding it to the perimeter.
“We could be a problem. He’ll be down there, 7-foot, athletic, times his blocks well. Me, if I’m playing the 4, I could go down in the post and it would be a mismatch problem. We’ll definitely be tough for other teams to guard.”
He’ll also be challenged to continue to come along as a leader. Voted as one of the team’s captains during the preseason, Key acknowledged that taking on a leadership role was something he wasn’t really accustomed to doing.
“Being a leader, there’s some ups and downs with that,” he said. “Even in high school, I always had the older guy to look for. This year I was the older guy. I’m not really going to go into detail, but there’s some (leadership) stuff that you would want to go right or you would want to do different.
“That’s in the past. You move on. You learn from your mistakes. (I'm) learning from that.”
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Zed Key hoping for growth with shoulder surgery looming for OSU star
