Malaki Branham sees OSU’s Brice Sensabaugh ‘picking where I left off’

On Feb 15, 2023

CLEVELAND – If there’s anyone who knows what Brice Sensabaugh is going through, it might be Malaki Branham.

It was a season ago that the Ohio State freshman, a starter beginning in the second game of the year, played his way from NBA afterthought to first-round draft pick and the program’s first one-and-done since D’Angelo Russell in 2015. Now a rookie with the San Antonio Spurs, Branham has been keeping tabs.

And yes, he sees the similarities between where his season ended and where Sensabaugh’s could be headed.

Ohio State Buckeyes:Join the Ohio State Sports Insider text group with Bill Rabinowitz, Joey Kaufman Adam Jardy

“I feel like he’s picking up where I left off,” Branham said before Monday night’s game against the Cavaliers, where he scored 18 points.

Seated inside the Billy Joel Star Room just down the hallway from the visitors’ locker room at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, Branham folded his formidable frame into a folding chair and smiled. An Ohio native who starred at Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary, he arrived at Ohio State as a four-star prospect ranked No. 38 nationally in the 247Sports.com composite database and then averaged 17.0 points in the final 22 games of the season for the Buckeyes to play his way into the NBA faster than any outsiders expected.

Branham averaged 13.7 points per game for the season and 16.3 in Big Ten play while shooting 52.3% from the floor. Coach Chris Holtmann has said he realized Branham was likely gone when he scored 27 points to power the Buckeyes past Indiana in an overtime win on Feb. 21, but Branham said it was a little later when the noise started to really reach him.

“I’d probably say after the Michigan State game,” he said. “It was a lot of mock drafts and stuff like that. I didn’t really look at it, but after that I’m like, if I keep doing this for the last couple games I can definitely make this jump. And I made that jump.”