1. Minnesota got some relatively good news yesterday when Andre Hollins was diagnosed with what has been described as a “severe ankle sprain” after x-rays and later a MRI on his left ankle came back negative. A “severe ankle sprain” might not sound like good news on the surface, but with the way Hollins went down it would not have been unreasonable to think he might have broken a bone or suffered significant ligament damage. Instead, Hollins will be evaluated daily according to the coaching staff and has not been ruled out of their game against Nebraska on Sunday. Given how easy the Gophers upcoming schedule is and how important Hollins is to the team it would seem like they would be more likely to give him more time to recover.
2. At this point we are not sure if we are going to see this Michigan State team completely healthy the rest of this season. It seems like as soon as they are about to get back to full strength. The latest addition to the injury list is Branden Dawson, who broke a bone in his left hand after slamming it into a table during a film session. Dawson claims that he was upset at himself and in particular at comments that Dan Dakich had made about the team’s effort. The long bright spot for the Spartans with this injury is that Dawson is only expected to be out for 4-5 weeks, which means he should be back in time for March.
3. Yesterday, the US Basketball Writers Association released its Oscar Robertson Trophy Midseason Watch List that features what the USBWA considers the top 23 players in the country. As you might expect this list is fairly similar to the one put out by the Wooden Award the day before. The one notable inclusion in this group is Xavier Thames, who has been putting up ridiculous advanced metric numbers, but has been largely ignored because he plays at San Diego State. Other than Thames the list also has most of the same snubs as the Wooden list and like the Wooden list it also does not eliminate players from postseason consideration for awards.
4. Kentucky basketball tickets are among the most coveted in all of college basketball so it should come as no surprise that somebody is reportedly trying to make money off counterfeit tickets. According to reports, Lexington police are investigating a woman’s claim that she was sold counterfeit tickets to Tuesday night’s game against Texas A&M. Lexington police have already identified an individual that they would like to question about the case.
5. We have no idea how this even became a controversy, but yesterday Nik Stauskas apologized for comments that his father made about Nik potentially turning pro after the season. Nik’s father, Paul, had recently told SI.com that there was a “really good possibility” that Nik might enter the NBA Draft after this season. At this point we would consider Stauskas as a borderline first round pick so while he might enter this year’s Draft it is too early for him to be thinking about it and way too early for him or his family to talk about it. While this is a different circumstance than the one that Russ Smith’s father put him in after the NCAA Championship Game it follows a similar pattern of a family member deciding to use some of his or her son’s fame to get a little bit of media attention too.

nvr1983 (1398 Posts)

This entry was posted on Friday, January 24th, 2014 at 7:00 am by nvr1983 and is filed under morning 5, Regular Features. Tagged: andre hollins, branden dawson, kentucky, nik stauskas, Xavier Thames. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.