Perhaps Jon had a little patella tendinitis - he is wearing a strap around the knee just below the cap that I have not noticed before. That could have affected his jump shot and his shots in the lane when he did not seem to have as much lift.
In any event, glad our sharpshooter is back.
The hand looks bad but hopefully RICE will help!!
Again, hi-jacking...but, I actually broke my wrist (dominant hand) and played with a cast on it for 4 weeks. I was actually allowed to play with a knee pad placed over it.
If there is anyone who would ever do something like that and would BE EFFECTIVE (in terms of helping his team in any way he could), it would be Kyle! He's a beast!
Kyle hasn't hit a shot from the field since re-injuring the wrist in the fall against Purdue.
Also, I have a theory. It made no sense to me at all that Kyle was guarding Dunn yesterday. For the life of me I could not understand what K was doing there. Jon has always always drawn the assignment to guard the sharp-shooting wing player/2 Guard, and has always been great at it. Plus with Kyle on Dunn it put Jon defending a 6'10 Small Forward, which meant at rebounding time Jon is inside trying to box out a 6'10 guy and Kyle (one of our best rebounders) is out on the perimeter with Dunn. Plus it put Kyle in early foul trouble.
It just did not add up for me. But then on the ride home from work today I hit on a theory. I think Kyle's wrist was banged up so badly K knew Kyle would struggle to make shots. And that meant Nolan and Jon absolutely had to score and score a lot. So maybe K was trying to save energy for Jon and figured if Jon was on Dunn it would end up hurting Jon's offense and with Kyle's wrist situation we could not afford to have Jon and Kyle struggle on offense.
Maybe I am off base here and K just felt Kyle was his best bet against Dunn, and the energy he spent chasing Dunn is what led to the off day shooting the ball. Maybe. But I am inclined to believe if Kyle's wrist was a non-issue, Jon would have been on Dunn.
Thoughts??
I think it likely that Boozer nailed it. Even in the post-game press conference, neither K nor the players mentioned anything about Kyle's wrist even though they were specifically asked about his 0 for 10 shooting. My guess is that his hand was numbed.
He actually looked good on at least the last of his three-ball attempts, the one that Lance jammed back in (how sweet was that). In fact, the ball seemed to be one of those that went halfway down and a hard wind blew it back out.
The hand looks terribly nasty. One only hopes that the swelling subsides and he has a chance to play somewhere near his regular game. Kyle has been super ever since they stopped playing him like a guard, and his run on offense through the ACC and then NCAA tournament up through the Baylor game was, in my mind, at a First Team All American level. One hopes for him and his team, not to mention the faithful, that he gets to finish it out that way this season.
He just needs one hand anyway
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEG2qmMvIGE