Two days ago, the outlook for Musa Jallow was far from inspiring.

The redshirt junior had seen a grand total of eight minutes on the court in Ohio State's past three games, including zero in the Buckeyes' statement-making win at Wisconsin.

Since coming back from a week-long, COVID-related absence in early January, Jallow has received more than 10 minutes of run just once in seven games.

“Bottom line is you can’t play everybody,” Chris Holtmann said when asked about Jallow on Tuesday. “The rotation gets trimmed; I wouldn’t be doing my job if we were trying to play 12 guys and spreading the minutes out. You’ve kind of gotta commit to a group. That could change, but that’s part of it.”

With his fourth-year forward averaging under three points per contest and shooting 57.9 percent from the free throw line (and 5.9 percent from behind the 3-point line!) this season, Holtmann had decent reason to look beyond Jallow for contributions.

Freshman wing Eugene Brown III and junior forward Justin Ahrens have filled in the gap nicely; Brown has shown great activity on the defensive end and Ahrens is one of the top 3-point marksmen in the Big Ten.

When a team has as many rotation-ready players as Ohio State, someone is bound to end up holding the short end of the stick.

That someone has certainly been Jallow in the earliest part of 2021.

“Ultimately, somebody’s gonna get squeezed out,” Holtmann said. “Whoever does get squeezed out has to stay ready, because anything could change at any moment.”

Everything appeared to be heading down an all-too-familiar road throughout Ohio State's Wednesday night matchup with Penn State; Jallow only played the final 42 seconds of the first half and settled into a familiar spot on the pine for the early portion of a back-and-forth second half.

But his most important minutes were still to come.

With just over five minutes remaining in a one-possession game, senior forward Kyle Young fouled out. Young was matched up with Seth Lundy, who had already put up a cool 23 points on the evening.

Ohio State needed an answer on defense against a Lundy and a Penn State offense that could seemingly score at will.

“We had some odd rotations out there. I think in general, we just weren’t connected enough defensively tonight,” Holtmann said. “Some of that had to do with the fact that, listen, we still have a lot of new guys that we’re implementing into our rotation. We have some errors defensively.”

So in a last-ditch effort, the head coach of the Buckeyes stuck Jallow on Lundy in hopes of steadying his defense.

Lundy would only score three more points in the game’s closing minutes.

Penn State's leading scorer on Wednesday shot 1-for-4 from the floor and added a massive turnover with just over 60 seconds on the clock.

In the most important sequence of his season, Jallow provided. He didn’t score one point, grab one rebound, or take a single shot in his four minutes on the court, but he was ready to play his role when called upon.

“Musa came in and had some big minutes, really big minutes,” sophomore forward E.J. Liddell said. “Coach emphasizes: Stay ready on the bench. Musa came in and played great defense, helped us win this game. I can’t thank Musa more for that.”

This deep into the season, Holtmann has normally bumped his rotation down to seven or eight players.

The fact that he went 11 strong (without Jimmy Sotos) in a mid-season Big Ten matchup is a sign of this team’s overwhelming depth and willingness to step up.

Jallow provided the perfect representation of that “next man up” mentality that his head coach has preached since the earliest days of the preseason.

“We’ve got multiple guys that can step up,” Holtmann said. “We’ve got some depth behind some guys. They’ve proven that. It was good to see some guys finish.

"Again, I come back to Musa Jallow. I thought Musa was tremendous. Short stint, but he was phenomenal. He just really made it difficult for Lundy late.”