UNC confirmed today that Marcus Ginyard had surgery to insert a screw into his left foot to repair a stress fracture.
From ACC Now:
North Carolina forward Marcus Ginyard will be sidelined for at least eight weeks after having surgery to repair a stress fracture in his left foot Wednesday, the school announced.
Doctors inserted a screw in his fifth left metatarsal, according to the news release.
Ginyard, the starting small forward, averaged 6.9 points and 4.5 rebounds last season and has been named the team’s Defensive Player of the Year each othe past two seasons. He also contributes a key leadership role, and played most of last season despite hobbling around in a walking boot on his left foot because of a nagging injury to his left toe. The injuries are related, a team spokesman confirmed.
Eight weeks from now means December so you can go ahead and pencil him in at close to ready by January and hopefully full speed by the ACC home stretch. A foot injury like this is tough because you are limited in what you can do to keep you conditioning up.
As for team impact. Obviously time for Danny Green to step up and play big. Not that he has not in the past but now he gets to be a starter. Green will need to be huge, especially on defense, since that was Ginyard’s forte. I also think Bobby Frasor will be called upon more at the two slot for his defense with Ginyard out. This obviously changes slightly what I wrote earlier about Frasor and with the backcourt depth getting a tad thin I imagine we will see more of Larry Drew earlier than expected. I also wonder if Roy will go big more often using Ed Davis or Tyler Zeller in with Tyler Hansbrough and Deon Thompson. So many possibilities, so little time. Anyway, UNC will have to adjust for the first few weeks and play some big games without a senior leader and the team’s best defender. That pretty much adds more pressure to Ty Lawson and Wayne Ellington among others to really get on board in terms of playing great defense. I am sort of expecting UNC to be a better team defensively this season mainly because they cannot win a title without it but also because I think the proper focus will be there from guys who have previously opted to only play good defense in spurts. With Ginyard out for a bit, that is even more important to cover the void.
And general discussions of team chemistry when Ginyard comes back are not on the table right now.
Update: One point I was remiss in mentioning. Will Graves could be huge in Ginyard’s absence as well though if his defense is not any better then forget I mentioned him. That will be the aspect of Ginyard being out, the offense will be fine but the defense will need to work to cover.
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THF,
My question is and I know this is going to sound stupid, but why would they wait until now to do the surgery?
Isn’t this something that say could have been done hmmmmmmm. In April, May, June or July?
I don’t get the timing or why you would wait to have it done and lose 3 to 4 months of playing time.
Can you explain?
My guess is they followed standard procedure which is surgery is the last resort. They likely tried to manage it with the boot on his foot hoping it would heal up. That, after all, makes the most sense because that way he is ready to play. Obviously after a few weeks of things not progressing they move to the more aggressive course.
It is a little like dealing with some kind of severe operating system problem on your computer. You spend two hours trying to fix it only to eventually reload the OS and start anew. Had you done that to start with you could have saved yourself two hours but instead you tried to fix it so you did not have to reload the OS.
Same thing here. They tried to fix it without the surgery but by the time you figure out surgery is the only fix you end up wasting the time and then creating a longer rehab.
That is simply how it goes.
Somewhere, Danny Green is Dancing…
This is too bad for Marcus but is one instance where our depth will help soften the blow. Marcus is a bright young man and can still lead from the bench until his return. And I do expect EVERYONE to step up their defense, especially on the perimter, this year.
I’m confused though. Is it eight weeks from today (which would put his return mid December) or misses eight weeks (which is in line with your comments THF)?
He will be out eight weeks which should mean he could possibly return for the Michigan State game in early December. That being said I think you are looking at January before you deem him closer to 100% in terms of rhythm and conditioning…possibly longer.
Well, the reason they didn’t do the surgery in hmmmmmmmm, April, May, June, or July was because the injury happened in late August in a pick up game. It was originally ruled a high ankle sprain from what I’ve read.
Read where?
According to ACC Now the stress fracture which is in one of the bone in his foot was related to the toe injury from last season. Stress fractures are not sudden injuries so it possible it did not manifest itself until August but I doubt an injury in the foot would be confused with a high sprain.
Marcus should take as long as he needs. I’d gladly trade a loss in December to MSU for a fully healthy Ginyard in March/April. Plus, losing early will eliminate all of the silly “Undefeated season” talk…
Your right that its not just a sudden injury but the ankle injury is what aggravated the stress fracture. Your probobly right about them considering surgery a last option or it could be they were just completely unknowing of the extent of the injury until the ankle sprain. The best treatment for a stress fracture is almost always resting the injured foot. Unless there is a concern for displacement then more aggressive measures should be taken. My guess is that had Ginyard and team officials known of the stress fracture he wouldn’t have been playing on the injured foot and risking being sidelined for a major part of the season, until it was fully healed.
Check out these sites…
http://mbd.scout.com/mb.aspx?s=78&f=1411&t=2841222
http://www.fayobserver.com/article?id=306822
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/news/story?id=3632725
It really is a shame that our players were so beat up by the end of last year. If Marcus could be back by ACC play, I think we will in good shape. Someone also needs to tell Tywon to tighten his shoes this year.
Sounds like it could have possibly never healed completely from last season. I was kind of surprised initially they went with surgery for this instead of just rest (I’ve had this same injury before and rest is crucial). But maybe they recall what Quentin Thomas and Sean May went through with lingering stress fracture injuries and just wanted to take extra precaution to fix this. Thoughts?
Apparently they have been resting it all through the summer. Ginyard was wearing a boot but I am guessing it was determined the fracture was not healing and they needed to put a screw in the foot to facilitate that.
I know our depth is okay. I wonder how long it will take him to get back in the groove of the Team. He’ll have lost crucial time running the break and having all on the same page. This stinks.
I worry more about missing him on defense than I do on offense.
This stinks. Just when it all was going so right. Senior laden, seemingly great Frosh players. We have all the tools this year.
No worries. This team went how long without Lawson last season? I am convinced they will be a infinitely better on defense as a team so missing him for the early season will not be a major problem. The point is to gel come March and there will be plenty of time to do that.