A timeline: Seth Towns endures memorable Ohio State tenure
The natural inclination would’ve been to promise points, wins or maybe even championships. Such is the typical bravado that comes when an athlete makes a move to a new location and embarks on a new stage of a career.
Seth Towns went a different route. A Columbus kid who always dreamed of playing for the Buckeyes, Towns wasn’t heavily recruited by his hometown school despite becoming the all-time leading scorer in Northland history and opted for an Ivy League education instead. Towns signed with Harvard and, as a sophomore, was the league’s player of the year in a season that proved to be his last one featuring significant minutes.
Two injury-devastated seasons later, Towns was set to graduate with his sociology degree when he opted to finish his basketball career as a graduate transfer. Michigan, Virginia, Kansas and Maryland were all in the running, and Duke made a late push, but ultimately Towns went with where his heart had been and committed to Ohio State during the spring of 2020.
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It had been more than two years since Towns had last set foot in a Division I game, and when he surveyed the road ahead he had a promise to Ohio State fans: it was unclear what type of production his body would allow, but the body of work would show Buckeyes fans how much it meant for him to put on that jersey and live out his lifelong dream.
Sunday afternoon, on the cusp of what would have been his third and final season with the Buckeyes, the echoes of that sentiment were all over a statement Towns issued announcing that he was stepping away from the program.
“Buckeye Nation, it has been a great honor to represent you and the Ohio State University for two years,” he wrote. “I share with many of you the frustration of not having been able to compete at the level I am capable of, or at least something close to it. Yet, it is the immense gratitude I feel for having the chance to play at all that has carried me through for so long.”
The statement, issued 534 days since his last game, puts a cap on Towns’ career. Here’s how he got here.
March 21, 2020 – Seth Towns commits to Ohio State
COVID-19 wasn’t in the public consciousness when Ohio State coach Chris Holtmann squeezed in a visit to Harvard to spend some time talking with Towns, who was considering a graduate transfer. The Buckeyes had win at Northwestern on Jan. 26 and were prepping for a Feb. 1 home date with Indiana when Holtmann went to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and laid the groundwork for Towns to come home.
A little more than a month later, the sport was on indefinite hiatus but Towns’ recruitment was picking up steam. A list of suitors emerged in mid-March that included Kansas, Maryland, Michigan, Ohio State, Syracuse and Virginia. One day after that list went public, Duke emerged as a potential suitor as well, and ultimately the Blue Devils presented the strongest challenge to the Buckeyes.
“Everything just stopped in that moment,” Towns said of taking a phone call from Mike Krzykewski. “I knew they had been interested because my coach, coach Tommy Amaker, had been in contact with them about me, but they hadn’t reached out to me directly so I didn’t know how interested or if it was a legitimate interest.”
It was legitimate, but so were the feelings about Ohio State.
“Playing for Ohio State has been a childhood dream of mine,” he said. “I was born a Buckeye, raised a Buckeye and even while I was at Harvard I was always watching Ohio State, cheering for them.”
May 28, 2020 – Seth Towns graduates from Harvard
Graduation was virtual due to the pandemic, but Towns earned his bachelor’s degree in sociology and posted a photo to social media of himself in his robes.
May 29, 2020 – Seth Towns is detained by Columbus police during peaceful protest
After earning his degree, Towns was a participant in the subsequent protests that took place in downtown Columbus following the killing of Black man George Floyd by white police officers in Minneapolis. He was handcuffed and led into a police van but was not charged or arrested.
Seth Towns: Ohio State men’s basketball player Seth Towns has long been outspoken about social justice
In a post to Twitter the following day, Towns wrote, “In a span of 24 hours, I walked across a Harvard virtual graduation stage into the back of (a) police van alongside other peaceful protestors – both of which I am equally proud of.” He also appeared on SportsCenter to discuss the situation, where he promised to continue to use his voice to speak out for people who are unheard.
December 8, 2020 – Seth Towns takes a knee
Ohio State opened with three straight home games but went to Notre Dame for the ACC-Big Ten Challenge. Both teams were inside their respective locker rooms when the national anthem played for the first three games, but as the Buckeyes and Irish stood on the court inside the Joyce Center Towns dropped his right knee to the hardwood while keeping his arms locked with his teammates.
After the game, he Tweeted a photo of himself kneeling with the message, “Justice for Casey Goodson,” a 23-year-old Black man who was shot in the back and killed by a white Columbus sheriff's deputy. Towns and Goodson were childhood friends
December 19, 2020 – Seth Towns makes his Ohio State debut
There were no fans in the stands to witness it, but Towns returned to the court after a 1,014-day layoff as Ohio State faced UCLA inside Cleveland’s Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse as part of the CBSSports Classic. With 2:58 left in the first half, Towns replaced Musa Jallow and made his Buckeyes debut in the seventh game of the season. He had been hoping to be full-go at the start of the year, but when preseason camp began he still hadn’t progressed to full team drills or cutting.
He played for two minutes and missed his only shot, a 3-pointer, but he was back.
March 12, 2021 – Seth Towns plays key role in win against Purdue
Towns’ progression was anything but linear. He saw double-digit minutes in consecutive late-December games but totaled 15 in Ohio State’s next three, a pattern that would essentially repeat leading into the postseason. But after playing only two minutes in a Big Ten tournament second-round game against Minnesota, Towns received a text from Holtmann telling him to be ready for the next day’s quarterfinal game against Purdue.
In what would be Kyle Young’s final game of the season, Towns played what was to that point a season-high 21 minutes and scored 12 points. It would be his high-water scoring mark for the Buckeyes, and his contributions helped lead the Buckeyes past the Boilermakers in overtime. Two days later, he totaled 28 minutes in Ohio State’s title game overtime loss to Illinois, but when the Buckeyes suffered a first-round NCAA Tournament upset at the hands of Oral Roberts, Towns finished with six rebounds and no points in 11 minutes.
It would be his final game.
May 15, 2021 – Seth Towns launches public book club
In the hopes of engaging in respectful, informed conversation with others, Towns launched the “Better Booklist” and provided links to read free copies of books starting with “Are Prisons Obselete?” by Angela Y. Davis. An avid reader, Towns said his goals included encouraging others to have a dialogue with “the systems that perpetuate this violence and this oppression.”
September, 2021 – Seth Towns undergoes back surgery
After entering the offseason focused on getting his knees fully healthy once again, Towns’ legs were feeling as strong as they had been since the initial injury at Harvard when something else popped up. In early September, Towns underwent a microdiscectomy surgery to remove a damaged disk and relieve pressure on his nerves. It came with a recovery time of 3-4 months, but at the team’s media day Towns expressed his belief that this was just a different, unrelated bump in the road.
“You can’t get too down because hope is still alive, hope is still there,” he said. “Honestly, the chances are really good for me to have a good year.”
On October 29, Holtmann told reporters that Towns “is just now beginning to return to some conditioning activity” and that the though remained that he would return by mid-to-late December.
February 8, 2022 – Seth Towns is shut down for the season
The longer Towns remained sidelined, the more unlikely his participation seemed, and one day before the Buckeyes went to Rutgers Holtmann put an end to the speculation by announcing that he would not return this season.
The situation was described as “season-ending, but not career-ending” by the Ohio State coach.
“I’m optimistic that his days in a Buckeye uniform aren’t over, I really am,” he said.
April 22, 2022 – Seth Towns plans to return
After having taken both a redshirt and medical redshirt season during his career, Towns had the chance to return for a seventh year of college basketball thanks to the extra year of eligibility afforded to all players who played through the COVID-impacted 2020-21 season. After spending a month thinking about it and speaking with Holtmann, Towns opted to exercise that option and give his Ohio State dream one more chance. The Buckeyes did not need to free up his scholarship and, viewing it as a low-risk, high-reward type of decision, agreed to bring him back.
September 4, 2022 – Seth Towns steps away
For months, Towns continued his rehabilitation with an eye on having some sort of role toward the end of the rotation for the 2022-23 Buckeyes. He didn’t participate in the team’s exhibition games while in the Bahamas but did practice as he continued to work on his body and put himself into position to play once fall practice got underway.
Instead, after the team ran its customary preseason timed mile, the haphazard recovery times Towns continued to experience finally proved to be too much. He will be allowed to visit with the team and attend games and practices, but now Towns will begin to plot the next phase of his life – one that will almost certainly no longer include the game of basketball.
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Seth Towns: How his time unfolded at Ohio State
