Adjusting to life without Adams
Senior guard’s injury leaves gaping hole in Huskies’ offense
MEMPHIS — Once he got over the initial stab of pain and the shock, Jalen Adams realized his knee injury could have been worse.
“The way he [Temple’s J.P. Moorman II] fell on it,” Adams said, “the initial pain, I kind of was in shock and that added to the pain. But once I settled down, I realized I still had full motion in my leg and my knee and I was going to
be alright.”
Adams sustained the injury, a Grade 2-plus sprain of the medial collateral ligament in his left knee, during UConn’s loss at Temple on Wednesday night, and though he accompanied the Huskies to Memphis, where they play Sunday at 2 p.m., recovery time is estimated at four to six weeks. It’s going to be dicey as to whether he can play before the end of the season.
The Huskies (13-10, 4-6 in the American Athletic Conference] have to move on without him.
“Jalen has a long professional career ahead of him,” coach Dan Hurley said. “I
know how badly he wanted to be out there to finish his career. When I saw his face initially, I thought it was going to be worse. But the knee is a tricky thing, the timeline is right on schedule with the AAC Tournament. Is he not going to be able to run for four or five weeks, and then [we] expect him to go into a conference tournament game? I know he’s going to do everything he can to get back because it’s important to him, how he’s viewed at UConn, so he’ll push himself to get back out there.”
Adams, averaging 17 points per game, leaves a gaping hole in the Huskies’ offense, as does Alterique Gilbert, who has been out with a shoulder injury since Jan. 26 and termed by Hurley as “unlikely” to play Sunday. “The injury may be worse than we originally thought that night,” Hurley said. “We’ll have to deal with Al’s timeline on it. We have to be patient.”
Adams, too, will have to be patient and sensible. He and athletic trainer James Doran will be working to strengthen the knee as it heals in the coming weeks.
“If James feels like I’m 100 percent and I feel like I’m 100 percent I’m more than willing to come back,” Adams said. “I just want to get to 100 percent. I don’t want to rush back, want to look at the long side of things.”
So it’s next man up, and in the backcourt that means the lone true freshmen on the roster, Brendan Adams, who has been averaging 12 minutes per game, will have to grow up fast.
“Jalen is my roommate on campus, and I’ve spent a lot of time with him,” Brendan Adams said, “he’s been talking to me all season about my struggles, saying ‘Keep your head up, stay positive and everything will work out.’ He’s talked to me about his freshman year multiple times, how he had to just grow and use the year as his learning year and his sophomore year was so much better.”
As a freshman in 201516, Jalen averaged 7.3 points per game and hit only 12 of 44 on 3-point attempts. Brendan Adams is 7-for-35, air-balling a couple of threes at Temple, shooting 30.6 percemt overall.
“I don’t worry about the shooting,” Hurley said. “He’s a good shooter, a good offensive player. Struggles on defense affect your offense, especially when you’re a young player and you know your coach is frustrated because you can’t guard at a high level. All I’ve stressed to Brendan is, you’ve got to show a lot of grit a lot of toughness at a place like his and become a better defensive player. He needs to see the ball go in, and I need to let him play through some of his mistakes.”
Said Jalen Adams: “You can’t consider Brendan a freshman any more, we’re far enough into the season for him to be a sophomore. He’s very talented, we see it every day in practice. It’s tough as a freshman to get out there and play with all the confidence you need to have. He doesn’t have too much to worry about, just go out and play basketball.”
Christian Vital and Tarin Smith are UConn’s other two healthy guards. Hurley will have to tinker with different alignments against Memphis (13-10, 5-5), perhaps going with a bigger lineup. Injuries are all too familiar with this group, with Gilbert missing most of his first two seasons with shoulder injuries, Mamadou Diarra beset with chronic knee problems, Terry Larrier missing most of 2016-17 with a torn ACL, Kassoum Yakwe currently out, possibly for the season, with a fractured foot.
But Hurley wants to nip self-pity in the bud.
“There is still a path to victory for us, but it’s more narrow,” he said. “You get that ‘Here we go again,’ and that compounds the issues. You can’t do that at UConn because everybody wants to beat us and kick us while we’re down, and they’re doing that. It’s a nice scalp to have, UConn, people are beating up on our brand - our opponents like that. But soon they won’t be doing that anymore.”
Dom Amore can be re a c h e d at damore@courant.com