The elder Ohio State walk-on’s compassion stems from his own family’s health struggles. Lorbach’s father has battled a bile duct and liver cancer for years. When he arrived in Columbus, Lorbach’s parents shouldered his student loans, yet treatments gradually made those monthly payments more and more difficult to muster. He persisted nonetheless, waving a towel as feverishly as any member of the Buckeyes’ bench. When D’Angelo Russell visited campus as a high-profile recruit, the coaching staff made sure to introduce him to Lorbach. Once the elite point guard prospect joined the program, he spent countless post-practice hours battling one-on-one against the walk-on.
They worked within a self-imposed three-dribble limit, a tactic Lorbach learned from a nearby trainer Robbie Haught, who still drills Russell every offseason. “I used to bust his ass,” the All-Star point guard now coos. Lorbach felt his game progress from those late-night sparring sessions, and experienced Russell’s palpable progression throughout his flashpan freshman campaign firsthand. When Ohio State visited Northwestern that winter, Russell’s dream season crescendoed in a career-high, 33-point drubbing of the Wildcats. “He was dicing up the defense and throwing some of the most ridiculous passes I’ve ever seen,” Lorbach says. With just under two minutes to play, Russell isolated a defender at the top of the key, rejected a screen and sent his opponent sputtering to the hardwood. “I dropped somebody,” Russell recalls, grinning.
At the Buckeyes’ next film session, then-head coach Thad Matta rolled the clip. “He kept showing me make the kid fall, kept showing me make the kid fall, kept showing me make the kid fall,” Russell says. “Every time I made the kid fall, Jake popped up.” In the top right corner of the screen, the floppy-haired walk-on burst off the bench like he was fired out of an ejector seat, frenetically sprinting up and down the sideline like he had witnessed an actual homicide. Matta zoomed in on Lorbach’s reaction, gushing over the emphatic display of team spirit. “I love that s---!” Matta professed. “I love that s--- so much, I’m putting you on scholarship.” “Jake just started crying,” Russell says. “They didn’t have to struggle to pay his dad’s medical bills anymore.”
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