Thursday, March 26, 2009

From the Practice Field to the Keyboard

Just got back from a very productive trip over to Wake, and I wanted to get this up before the the NCAA Tournament games start in a few minutes.

Had an interview with Coach Dino Gaudio, from which we’ll put together a Q&A that, best I can tell now, should run Sunday. He’s already talked with every player on the team since last week’s first-round loss to Cleveland State, and he is upbeat about the direction of the program. The news from the interview is that he really expects Jeff Teague and Al-Farouq Aminu to be back next season, though he said Teague might put his name into consideration just to go through the process before pulling it back out. Teague asked him how close he could come to graduating after another year, and was asking the academic support people the same question. He said he’s really not sure about James Johnson. He said he had no feeling about him.

The news from the football front could be much worse. Neither Josh Bush nor Brandon Ghee were practicing after their violent collision Tuesday on the first day of spring. The MRI revealed a torn MCL on Ghee, but no damage to the ACL. Football trainer Don Steelman said he didn’t suspect any, but was happy to rule it out. Ghee’ll be out 4 to 6 weeks, so he won’t be back this spring. But Steelman said he could call it a third-degree sprain or a tear and he’d be saying the same thing. No surgery is planned. Bush sustained a concussion, and may be back as early as next week. No long-term effects are expected.