MBB : A time to heal: Orange uses week off before DePaul to recover, gear up for postseason
As he crashed hard to the floor of the Verizon Center last Saturday, Brandon Triche was reminded of a torn ACL he suffered in high school.
Austin Freeman, Georgetown’s 235-pound guard, conveniently landed right on Triche’s leg. The Syracuse sophomore expected the worst.
‘I really thought I broke by leg,’ Triche said Saturday. ‘But I could get up, so I was all right.’
Triche finished out the game, sinking clutch free throws down the stretch, but was evidently hobbled, sporting a nasty bruise in the locker room afterward.
He’s far from the only Syracuse player nursing the wounds of a long season.
A variety of nagging bumps, bruises and minor injuries have kept the Orange in need of rest and treatment. Both came during the Orange’s weeklong break between Georgetown and Saturday’s home and regular-season finale against DePaul (7-22, 1-16 Big East) inside the Carrier Dome (4 p.m., Big East Network).
Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim said Monday that the team hopes to make the most of the week to get the players rested and prepared for what lies ahead. The break between games is the largest since Jan. 8, and it could be just what the Orange needs heading into this weekend and with postseason play just around the corner.
And with a slim chance to finish fourth in the Big East, thus snagging a double-bye in the Big East tournament next week, there’s still a lot left to play for this Saturday against DePaul. Even if the Blue Demons are the league’s bottom-feeder.
‘DePaul has played very well,’ Boeheim said. ‘They haven’t won a lot of games, but they’ve been in a lot of games. They’ve played very well every time they’ve gone out there, and it’s important for us to be ready to play and keep trying to get better.’
The Blue Demons upset Providence on the road on Feb. 17 and nearly took down then-No. 14 Villanova in overtime on Feb. 19. So for Boeheim and SU, this isn’t a game they can overlook.
That means Triche and his banged-up teammates will have to continue playing through the pain. That has been the status quo for the Orange all season and will need to continue to be for Syracuse to find success during this season’s stretch run.
Kris Joseph missed a game with a concussion after smacking his head on the court against Cincinnati and said after a Feb. 21 game against Villanova that he’s been playing with a sore left knee for most of the season. Fab Melo has been slowed by an Achilles injury. Baye Moussa Keita has played the past four games with what he describes as a sprained left wrist. C.J. Fair rolled his ankle against Villanova and was limited against Georgetown on Saturday.
The list goes on.
‘We have a lot of guys hurt,’ Boeheim said. ‘Hopefully, this time off will help, but you never know. You’ve still got to practice. You’ve still got to go hard in practice. It’s hard to get healthy during the season.
‘We’ll try to get everybody treatments and try to get everybody as healthy as we can, but there’s going to be some degree of banged-up guys at this stage.’
Several players had ice wrapped around different parts of their bodies after each of the last two games. It has become second nature. Not just for Syracuse but for virtually every team this late into the season.
Whichever team can cope the best will have an advantage come tournament time.
‘Just rest up, get right and get ready for the next one,’ Joseph said. ‘We’ve got some big games ahead, and we just have to fight through it.’
If the regular-season schedule was any indication, the physicality should only increase as the games become more meaningful these next few weeks. With little time to rest up and heal, there’s not much Syracuse can do but play it out under the circumstances.
That’s the nature of the Big East this time of year.
Seventeen games into the league schedule and four days of practice this week leave little time for rest. Triche will take that. He had just one thing on his mind in preparation for this weekend’s home finale.
‘To get well,’ Triche said Saturday. ‘I think everybody is beat from this game. Any Big East game, it probably takes two or three days to get back from the bumps and bruises.’
