Washington point guard Abdul Gaddy was one of the top recruits in the country when he came aboard in 2009, but after a disappointing freshman season and a torn ACL midway through his sophomore year, Gaddy has since fallen off the radar. But while the preseason focus is on guards Tony Wroten, Jr., and Terrence Ross, Gaddy will also be looked at to lead this team because of his experience. Percy Allen has a great feature on Gaddy, which includes some background and an interview with the point guard. The best part of the interview is when Gaddy talks about his summer shootarounds with former Husky Isaiah Thomas where the junior guard says he shot 18,000 jumpers in 22 days.
Hopes are high in Corvallis this season, as coach Craig Robinson says he finally has the talent to “compete in every game this season.” However, no one seems to be asking the question, “Craig, you do realize that you don’t have any new talent in this year’s starting lineup?”, but I guess that’s besides the point. This team does have talent, but the top two newcomers (Challe Barton and C.J. Mitchell) will be lucky if they see any meaningful minutes. The fact of the matter is, Robinson needs to do a better job coaching the players he has if the Beavers are to have a good year.
Fresh and new talent is the name of the game at Oregon this year, as the Ducks welcome in nine new players. Some of them are high school standouts, some of them are transfers, but all of them have Pac-12 talent. From freshman Jabari Brown to Devoe Joseph, the transfer from Minnesota, Oregon has the talent to pull an NCAA Tournament bid if things go well. There are also freshmen Brett Kingma and and Bruce Barron joining Brown and Jospeh as newcomers in the backcourt, both of which were highly-touted recruits in their own right. Barron did miss miss Oregon’s summer exhibition tour, but he is expected to be game-ready by Oregon’s Nov. 11 opener against Vanderbilt. “Bruce is probably just coming into his own” coach Dana Altman said about Barron after his arthroscopic knee surgery. Joseph D’Hippolito breaks down all of the new players here.
California head coach Mike Montgomery is cancer-free after his Oct. 19 surgery. Montgomery was diagnosed a month ago with “high-grade bladder cancer,” he told members of the Pac-12 media on Friday. He said that he will have no physical limitations while coaching, and senior guard Jorge Gutierrez added that the player-coach relationship between them has grown more personal since he learned of the situation. “We didn’t really have much of a connection outside of basketball, but he opened up a little bit more, so I think that helped us to relate with him more,” Gutierrez said.
USC guard Maurice Jones was thought of by many as the nation’s most underrated freshman in the nation last season. Jones averaged 9.9 PPG along with 3.2 APG and is being looked at to lead a USC team that is lacking in the talent department. Seth Rubinroit has a nice feature story on the sophomore standout, the only one in his class to represent a team at Pac-12 Media Day. Jones, the only returning starter from last year’s team, will be asked to carry the load at guard all year long after the season-injury to Jio Fontan. Coach Kevin O’Neill went as far as to tell fans, “Don’t come to the games, it’ll be ugly. Don’t show up. If we don’t have this guy, it’ll be very difficult for us to be competitive in major college games.”
Whether or not you’ve had a knee injury of any kind in the past, there aren’t many things that make people cringe more readily than watching a game on TV and seeing that slow-motion replay of a gruesome injury, especially when it involves an athlete’s knee(s). The only thing stranger than seeing that joint go out of place and do that strange contortion for a split-second (I shudder every time) is watching it from multiple angles in super-slo-mo in high definition while an announcer narrates it — “Oh yeah, THERE it is!”
We saw this during Robbie Hummel’s injury last night. When he drove into the lane and planted that right leg — you saw it. Something happened, and it was unnatural. Then the slow-motion replays gave you a better look at it. It’s the usual story — a player plants their (usually in-turned) leg, but the top part of the knee keeps moving while the bottom stays still. Pop. The first thing people think when a player goes down and grabs a knee is “Uh oh, ACL.” They’re often right, and unfortunately, though the MRI is pending, that looks like the case for Hummel.
You may ask how can they make that diagnosis without the MRI pictures. Good question. Doctors know that the physical exam is more important than any pictures you get. The next time you’re watching television and a player (in any sport) goes down with a knee injury, watch what the doctor or trainer does. There’s one specific thing that they almost always do first in evaluating the knee right there on the floor or field, or when they get the player back to the bench — there’s a test that checks the ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) almost immediately.
It’s called the “Anterior Drawer” test. Here’s what you’ll see. The doctor/trainer will lay the player on their back and bend the knee they’re checking to about a 90 degree angle. They’ll grab the leg at the calf with both hands, with their thumbs up to stabilize against the knee. Then they’ll pull forward on the bottom part of the leg as if they were opening a drawer. At this point, the player will usually yell loudly. This alone doesn’t tell you anything, since if I’d just hurt my knee and some putz started messing with it, the foot on my good leg would immediately rise up and head for the doctor/trainer’s face or testicles. What they’re feeling for is how much that bottom part of the leg slides forward at the knee when they do the drawer-opening motion. If it’s a lot, your suspicion for an ACL tear goes way up. If it’s not much or it feels normal, an ACL tear is still on the list, but not as likely. But quite often, you can literally see the result there on television. You can see the bottom part of the knee slide unnaturally forward (anteriorly) when the ACL is torn. MRIs are best for looking at ligaments (you can’t see them on a normal x-ray), and that almost always gets done, but this is how doctors make a “preliminary” diagnosis even without the pictures. There are other tests besides the Anterior Drawer to check the ACL, but that’s the one doctors and trainers most often use first, and the one you see them use most often right there on TV.
By the way, there’s also a Posterior Drawer test that checks the PCL (posterior cruciate ligament) in the back of the knee, where you push backward instead of forward. Same principle applies. One last thing — don’t go doing these things on your friends. The next time you see a knee injury on TV, though, watch the doctor/trainer do their exam. Or more specifically, check out their Drawers.
