According to official UNC sources they are fine.
Buster Sports reported on Wednesday that, according to a source close to the North Carolina basketball program, senior forward Tyler Hansbrough was playing “around 80 percent” of full strength because of a recurring shin injury.
On Wednesday night, moments after UNC defeated N.C. State at the Smith Center, UNC Associate Athletic Director Steve Kirschner said the 80 percent figure was untrue. He said Carolina coach Roy Williams said Hansbrough had not missed any practice time because of the shin problems and that he is not currently affected at all by the injury.
Kirschner was adamant in two different conversations regarding the matter, and at one point offered a member of the training staff to corroborate Williams’ position. Hansbrough also said his shins feel fine.
Hansbrough missed four of UNC’s first seven games and a great deal of early season practice because of his ailing shins, but has started the Tar Heels’ last 19 games and is averaging more than 30 minutes per outing in those contests.
However, he has looked less explosive in recent weeks than he did a year ago when the Missouri native ran away with national player of the year awards. His statistics have also been down, which is why the originally inquiry was made.
Jones says he is not retracting the original story but rather reporting it now with more, obviously official sources. That sounds like splitting hairs to me. For my part, I am offering a retraction since I posted the Jones’ information and couched it as accurate. My bad. I actually violated one of my own personal standards and that is to report any item of this nature for what it is: uncorroborated information. I then wait for something to come from official UNC sources to declare it to be the truth. So if I added to the problem I sincerely apologized.
As for Jones, that was not the only problem he had yesterday. Turns out he was the one whose questioning led to Roy Williams verbal indiscretion. Cue the song “So You Had a Bad Day” for him I guess.
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If this team is fully healthy going into the playoffs, we are going to have some fun. The week off after the Md. game should give them time to work on putting on the final touches.
Oh thank goodness. I am so glad. Thanks THF.
“Turns out he was the one whose questioning led to Roy Williams verbal indiscretion.”
That can’t be a coincidence. You have to wonder if Roy was already steamed about this guys false report, and his continued badgering just tipped him over.
THF, you shouldn’t apologize. You named your source, which is all the readers can ask for.
That’s right. THF didn’t initially make the statement, just re-verberating what he had seen was said.
Tyler will certainly have to have some post ACC games in order to achieve that number one scoring list, unless he gets a lot of those and 1′s he used to see in his freshman year, even at that, it is stretching it. I still hold out hope he can do it.
It’s looking like the second or third game in the ACCT is the safe bet. He’d need to average just under 33 to break it against Duke. I think it is better that Senior day be about all of the Seniors, anyway, and not have so much focus on a single member. Plus, it is the ACC scoring record, so breaking it at the conference tournament is a bit poetic.
Yes indeed.
Dearly, dearly would I love to see him break it in a cramdown in Gerald Henderson’s face in the ACCT championship game (which is where he’ll get it if he averages 21 ppg from here on in).
THF — I admire your high journalistic standards, which are in keeping with the way you run this site, but there is no need for an apology.
You gave the source of the “shins” story and provided an accurate quotation from it. Thus any reader was able to track down things on his own. It is typically the case that, for professional journalists, two independent corroborating sources are required before a purportedly factual item appears in the paper, but I have never seen that standard applied to blogging, which depends more than other outlets on speed.
And I can tell you this, too: What you put on this site is more accurate by a fare-thee-well than what appears every day in the New York Times. Not to mention more wholesome and more entertaining.
There was a really good interview with UNC’s media relations person, Steve Kirschner, in this month’s Tar Heel Monthly. He said that because newspapers are cutting back in their coverage of bball games, blog websites sometimes get credentials to attend the press conferences. Buster is one of those people obviously.
As for Buster’s question about pressing that led to Roy’s bad word, I think Roy thought it was actually a good question and gave him a wink.
THF should try to get into one of the press confrences! That would be so amazing!
I suspect THF has a job and probably doesn’t have time to go to all the press conferences.
This is great news about Tyler! I live in Wilmington and used to have to read the crap Andrew Jones would write for the sports section of the paper. It was always skewed against Carolina and in favor of the other NC schools, namely dook. I used to send him emails calling him out on it. As soon as I saw Andrew Jones had written this, I had my doubts. Also – if I were Roy and had Andrew Jones asking me stupid questions, I would probably cuss at him too