Malaki Branham is a walking bucket. He is teaching lessons at the Kingdom League.
— Ohio State Hoops Insider (@OSUHoopsInsider) July 11, 2021

Apparently Malaki put up 40 pts today in the league.  For those who don't know what it is, it's a basketball league at Ohio Dominican University that plays games on Sundays in the summer. Quite a few current Buckeyes play in it but also plenty of grown men, some of which that make a lot of money overseas. Players include Jared Sullinger, Xavier Simpson (former Wolverine), AJ Harris (formerly of OSU&New Mexico State), Taveon Kinsey (Marshall), etc.

My brother and cousin attended today and obviously said Malaki was very impressive. Also said Meechie and Zed played really well. They said that EJ had a shaky half (they left at halftime). But I saw on Twitter that EJ ended up with 29 pts and 14 rebs, so he must have had a big 2nd half.

Obviously I take a lot of the results of this league with a grain of salt.  I'm sure there isn't a lot of defense and Branham only had 11 pts (on 2-14 shooting) in his first game last week.  But just like the pro week a couple of weeks ago, it can't hurt for current Buckeyes to go up against grown men and some professional players.  I loved Thad Matta, but besides his usual weak non conference schedules, the only thing that really bothered me was him not allowing current players to play in summer leagues.  That basically killed the Worthington Summer League (Tuesdays and Thursdays) which was an incredible league to attend in the 1990s, especially the Jimmy Jackson era Bucks who had a fierce rivalry with a mainly UC alumni team.