A night after scoring 25 points against Seattle University on basically one leg, Wilcox had his ailing left hip X-rayed. The prognosis was a stress fracture in his femur.
The words “stress fracture” made him think of teammate Scott Suggs’ preseason predicament, which led him to miss so much time that he decided to redshirt this season. The words “stress fracture” had Wilcox worried that he’d be out for months, not weeks.
“That’s the first thing I thought of, and how Scott had to deal with it,” Wilcox said.
Fortunately for him and the Huskies, Wilcox’s stress fracture isn’t nearly as serious. It won’t require surgery, just rest. That rest includes this weekend.
Coach Lorenzo Romar isn’t expecting to have Wilcox for Thursday’s game against Cal or Saturday’s game against Stanford.
“I would say very, very doubtful,” Romar said. “I can’t say he’s definitely out, but highly doubtful.”
Wilcox was at practice Tuesday and shot free throws and did some other light shooting. That’s all he’s allowed to do for the time being. The only real way to heal the injury is rest.
“I feel like I can play right now,” Wilcox said. “I’m just trying to be on the safe side.”
The stress fracture is in the femur, but the pain is in Wilcox’s left hip.
“For several weeks, he’s been playing with that,” Romar said.
Before the Christmas break, Wilcox could feel a dull nagging pain there. He tried to treat it with heat and stretching. After the Christmas break, however, the pain continued to grow.
“The more I played on it, the worse it got,” Wilcox said. “Seattle U was the worst I dealt with. And we had to get X-rays after.”
Yet he scored 25 points, pulled down five rebounds and had two blocked shots in the game.
“I was trying to avoid my left leg as much as possible,” he said. “I have no idea how I did it. The free throws helped (he was 9-for-11 in the game). I didn’t have to work for those.”
Wilcox will have an X-ray today and some jumping tests, and he will continue to have them weekly to monitor how the bone is healing.
“I don’t know if it’s a day-to-day thing, but a week-to-week thing,” Romar said.
With Suggs redshirting and Wilcox out, the Huskies are now thin at a position where, at one time, they seemed overloaded.
Romar said he will use his timeouts a little differently, and possibly play a 2-3 zone defense to rest his players because man-to-man pressure defense takes a toll on players’ legs.
He may also play freshman Hikeem Stewart a little more. Against Washington State, Stewart played 10 minutes and didn’t attempt a shot.
“Those were a quality 10 minutes in that, number one, he was fine playing and was relaxed playing. And secondly, it allowed us to give us some guys some rest,” Romar said.
But in Wilcox, the Huskies are losing their second-leading scorer at 15.5 points a game. Stewart can’t even match a fraction of that offensive output.
“Guys are just going to have to step up and do more,” said sophomore Terrence Ross, who scored 30 points against Washington State with Wilcox out.
Romar knows that Ross needs to be one of those “step up” guys. It’s become obvious that he’s capable.
“With Terrence it’s just more of him being aggressive, a mindset,” Romar said. “There are scorers out there across America now, and over the years they just have a killer’s instinct in terms of going out there and being aggressive to score. I think that’s what we’d like to see out of Terrence.”
SIMMONS STAYS A STARTER
Darnell Gant played perhaps his best game of the season, scoring 13 points – including some key baskets down the stretch – and pulling down eight rebounds against Washington State. But it wasn’t enough for the fifth-year senior to move back into the starting lineup. Gant, who started 14 games this season, will continue to come off the bench.
Romar said he will remain with the starting lineup of Ross, Abdul Gaddy, Tony Wroten, Desmond Simmons and Aziz N’Diaye.
“Darnell played exception basketball, but we are going to stay the same way,” Romar said.
It was Simmons who replaced Gant in the starting lineup. The redshirt freshman played his way into a starting role by defending, rebounding and bringing a level of physicality Gant doesn’t possess.
“It was just Desmond needing to be on the floor for longer periods of time,” Romar said. “Not a slight to Darnell, but Desmond was getting a lot done. We just needed to have him out there longer.”
Simmons struggled against WSU, going 1-for-6 from the field in 19 minutes, but had seven rebounds.
Ryan Divish: 253-597-8483 ryan.divish@thenewstribune.com blog.thenewstribune.com/uwsports
THURSDAY
California at Washington, 5:30 p.m., Root Sports, 950-AM
