UNM’S WILLIAMS OUT WITH INJURY
Stress reaction in left foot means Lobo star will be sidelined tonight and until further notice
Monday, Lobo men’s basketball coach Craig Neal was confident in declaring the so-called curse that hit his team the past two months of February would not extend to this month.
Turns out, the curse didn’t even wait until the turn of the calendar.
Tuesday morning, before boarding their flight to Las Vegas, Nev., for tonight’s road revenge game against UNLV, the Lobos announced that senior leader Tim Williams will be out for an undetermined amount of time with a stress reaction in his left foot. It’s an injury that had kept the 6-foot-9 power forward out of many drills and practices the past couple of weeks.
Coupled with news that starting small forward Dane Kuiper will miss at least two games with a concussion, and the month of February, in which the Lobos (13-9, 6-4 Mountain West) have gone 3-13 the past two seasons, figures to be challenging.
UNM’s rather dire sounding, and not entirely specific, emailed statement from Neal on
Tuesday regarding Williams read:
“It’s with my great regret that I have to announce that Tim Williams is going to miss a substantial amount of time. We don’t know how long he will be out, but he has a stress reaction in his left foot. The most critical thing is that we take care of Tim. He has been a big part of our program and our biggest concern is that he gets healthy.”
That was a disappointing development since Monday afternoon, when Neal said Williams would miss practice as a precaution.
“Tim’s foot is just day-to-day,” Neal said then. “It’s just lingering. I think the more minutes he has in practice and the more minutes we have to play in the game, it’s hard. Any kind of those injuries is difficult.”
Last week, Neal acknowledged he had been concerned about the number of minutes Williams had been playing this season — his 33.8 per game is fourth most in the Mountain West.
The senior averaged 28.0 points, 7.5 rebounds and 2.5 blocked shots while playing an average of 38 minutes in back-to-back losses at Utah State and vs. Nevada on Jan. 4 and 7. Since then, his production and efficiency dipped over the past five games.
Williams is fourth in the league in scoring (17.9 points per game), seventh in rebounding (7.0), second in shooting (57.9 percent) and fifth in offensive rebounding (2.0).
A stress reaction is a precursor to a stress fracture with the bone not yet cracked, but showing signs of fatigue or breaking down due to repetitive high-stress use.
Rest and a walking boot are parts of the recovery, but a specific timetable on a return is not. Former Lobo Alex Kirk had a similar injury in late January 2014 and missed just two games before returning for the team’s stretch run.
Among the injuries of significance to starters or key rotational New Mexico players this season:
Starting guard Elijah Brown missed the first 26 practices, and both preseason exhibition games, with a hamstring injury.
Williams missed two games in December (a loss at Illinois State and a win over UTEP) with a concussion.
Junior forward Xavier Adams is out for the season with an ACL tear suffered Jan. 4.
Sophomore point guard Jordan Hunter missed most of four games after injuring his ankle Jan. 1 at San Diego State.
MacDougall missed four games and most of a fifth after suffering a concussion two minutes into the Jan. 7 loss to Nevada.
Kuiper will miss at least tonight’s game and Saturday vs. San Jose State with a concussion.
Williams will miss an undetermined amount of time with the foot injury.
“We’ve lost 30 days with concussion protocol because we’ve had three of them,” Neal said. “We’ve got to take care of our student-athletes, but that’s a big deal losing 30 days of those guys. Then you’ve got Jordan Hunter has been out and (Adams) is out for the year. So we’ve been hit, unlucky with the injury bug.”