Who’s ready for some Justin Watts?
UNC has announced freshman guard P.J. Hairston will miss the Virginia game with a “sore foot.” Here is the UNC release:
University of North Carolina freshman guard P.J. Hairston is sidelined with a sore left foot and will be unable to play in tomorrow’s ACC game against the Virginia Cavaliers. Hairston has played in all 24 games and is the Tar Heels’ seventh-leading scorer at 6.6 points per contest.
The Greensboro, N.C., native is wearing a protective boot on his left foot and will also not practice this afternoon. He is third on the team in three-pointers made with 30. He played 10 minutes but did not score in Wednesday’s game against Duke
If this has been persisting it would explain a great many things. Hairston has been in a fairly significant shooting slump since going 4-9 from three vs Monmouth on New Year’s Day. Through nine ACC games, Hairston is 6-35 from three point range with four of those makes coming in two games. Aside from the woeful shooting his defense has been extremely suspect to the point of being a liability. The question of how long the foot has been a problem is a pertinent one. Does it explain the prolonged slump or was the slump the routine kind but the injury deepened it? The best case scenario is Hairston can get healthy and return in time to make a meaningful contribution in the most crucial phase of the season.
The impact on UNC will be significant. Gary Parrish tweeted after the injury announcement that at some point the medical issues will begin to catch up with UNC. @Inside Carolina responded that it already has. The loss of Leslie McDonald was manageable and Dexter Strickland’s injury somewhat less so but still within reason. Hairston being healthy and hitting shots was a key component to handling the loss of both McDonald and Strickland. Since Hairston is out completely the Heels will use a six man rotation plus spot minutes from Justin Watts and Stillman White. For now that will be okay provided Watts has a red light unless he is under the basket by himself. On the defensive end, Watts is athletic and has an understanding of what Roy wants him to do which could make him effective in spots. Beyond the regular season, not having Hairston would mean UNC’s margin of error is actually less than zero which makes a run to the Final Four a very difficult proposition.
Speaking of Strickland, he underwent successful surgery to repair his meniscus and ACL on Thursday. Hopefully his rehab will go as well or better than McDonald’s did.
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Can we be certain that this wasn’t the last act of Rameses XVIII, some inter UNC squabble that left PJ crippled and the ram dead? If we can’t prove otherwise I say MAYBE. Stayed tuned this will be covered in depth at SFN.
Humor aside, this is bad and I’m really not happy about it. We need him badly. Just how many minutes can you get from Barnes in any game and expect him to heal?
May he get well soon and fly like Mike!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmG5m6XK8_s&feature=related
did we once again let someone that was hurt play.
I’ve been to all the home games this year, and my favorite part used to be watching PJ shoot in warm-ups. Since his ankle injury he has not gotten nearly the explosion up into his shot. It varies from shot-to-shot and game-to-game, but it is nowhere near as consistently impressive as it was. I don’t think he’s been the same player since, and I think it has very little to do with the step up in competition level. He needs to get well.
I think I’d like to see us play with a big line-up with either James Michael or Henson at the 3 and give Hubert some more playing time.
^I’ve observed the same thing and commented to my wife on it last game. I mean for a while, early on, he would effortlessly can 6 or 7 in a row from 4 ft. behind the line in warmups. Now I know that doesn’t have much to do with competition, but no doubt his form and confidence have been compromised by not being 100%. They’re all interrelated.
I am also concerned with HB’s ankle problems. You may recall that he was noticeably limping on the court just a week ago, but Roy kept him in because HB wanted to continue playing. Not sure that should be HB’s call.
As for Watts, I really like his energy and defense. He is capable of contributing valuable minutes. I just the want the Virginia game to start so I can get the dook loss out of my system.
I’m not a doctor, and I haven’t stayed in a Holiday Inn in years, but I would imagine their are different types of ankle problems that affect players differently. Hopefully Barnes will get healthy pretty soon, and hopefully Hairston doesn’t have one of those chronic problems we only find out about after the season is over.
with all the feet and ankle problems this program has suffered over the recent years, and, yes, I know it is basketball, you have to start wondering at some point if it truly is the shoes
this season could be blowing up fast
let’s hope it is but a one game thing and the rest will greatly improve his health and shot
How many other athletes are wearing these shoes and suffering injury?
No shoe company would want to be associated with an injury causing shoe.
Maybe it is sun spot activity.
Hairston had a significant wrist injury and then the foot. He has also lost two grandparents recently. I do not doubt his will to compete. He is no slouch and his defensive lapses against Duke were likely out of his control. Williams mentioned unprompted before the Duke game that Hairston was suffering from a lot of “aches and pains”.
“Williams mentioned unprompted before the Duke game that Hairston was suffering from a lot of “aches and pains”.”
No doubt figuratively as well as literally.
I have to wonder if it would be a good idea to just sit Barnes until his ankle is healed. I really don’t like when players feel pressured to play through an injury and it takes forever to fully heal or never actually fully heals at all.
It makes me wonder if the good of the player is being sacrificed for the perceived good of the team, something that I simply cannot abide.
Granted, I really don’t think Roy would ever do something like that, but I don’t like this whole, “has never missed a game due to injury” deal. Players get injured, it happens and teams have to find a way to deal with it. Undo pressure to play through an injury strikes me as… bad? My vocabulary fails me in this case.
These injuries are really starting to hinder UNC’s ability to play the way we want. Losing McDonald didn’t hurt that much, but Strickland’s injury was big, and these little aches and pains aren’t going to heal without rest. And now we’re entering the last part of the regular season, with games on the road, and we need to win out to win the ACc.
Unrelated, but… YGTBKM
http://aol.sportingnews.com/nfl/story/2012-02-10/butch-davis-to-join-buccaneers-but-not-as-assistant-coach
Summary – He’s a “sounding board,” not a coach, so he continues to draw his UNC pay-out. A $1 million salary to be a “sounding board.”
Sleazy. I am so happy this man no longer represents the University.
McBob looks ridiculous in a Laker uniform.
Knowing in advance that this is going to be unpopular, I’m going to say it anyway: This season is irretrievably marred. This is not to say we couldn’t still win the regular season and/or ACC crowns. Nor is it to say that we won’t at least make the Sweet Sixteen.
It is to say, however, that the horrible FSU and especially the Dook losses will hang over it for a very, very long time.
This is not a prescription for hanging our heads and accepting quasi-permanent glumness. It is, to the contrary, an invitation to a plan to re-adjust our goals and look toward the only real truimph and redemption available to us, that being the national championship.
I therefore suggest that we rest Barnes, Hairston and anyone else who is/gets injured until the injury is ONE HUNDRED PERCENT HEALED and then some.
In my view, the most prudent path forward is to de-emphasize winning in the regular season and focus on being as healthy, rested and well-stocked as possible for the only thing that matters now, the NCAAT.
One reason behind my thinking is that we are up against something we didn’t expect at the outset of the season: We are snakebit. You could not have watched the last two and a-half minutes of the Game That Will No Longer Be Mentioned and draw any other conclusion. And it’s not just that. It’s Stickland’s injury. It’s that two heralded freshmen are falling short of legitimate expectations. It’s that both opposing players you heard plenty about, and ones you heard nothing about, go unconscious from three-point land. We expected poor three-point defense, sure. But we did not expect what has cost us so dearly in two of the most misery-producing Carolina experiences in memory.
We need to understand what is happening to us, unusual (or even weird) as it may seem. Then we need to adopt a new plan. De-emphasize the next two and a-half weeks and have everyone 100% for March.
^I don’t disagree.
I’ve kept quiet during all of the dissection of the dook game. However, I am here to say that the Heels will go undefeated through the end of the regular season. The dook loss will stick in their collective craws and they will respond accordingly. Mark my words….
^ I respectfully disagree. First, it wouldn’t make all that much difference if we did go undefeated for the rest of the regular season. The losses to Dook and FSU, and the WAY we lost (tragedy and blowout, respectively), indelibly stain the season no matter what happens now.
Second, the team will not react in anger to the Dook loss. They know they outplayed Dook, so they don’t have that much to be angry about in the conventional sense. What they have is something to be depressed about, and depression does not win basketball games.
Third, you don’t improve your performance with a cast of more and more injured players. No, we don’t have any big injuries (yet), but it’s starting to happen, one ankle and one foot at a time. This is not to mention Strickland’s loss for the season.
Fourth, the second half schedule is murder, as we have all known from the outset.
Fifth, it’s almost always the case that you lose one game in the conference to some mediocre team you thought you were going to handle. The way things are going for us, I regard this routine likelihood as a near certainty.
Sixth and last, this team has learned an awful lesson. Dean Smith’s teams always thought they could win, no matter how far behind in a game they were. What happened in the Dook disaster taught this year’s team thay they can always lose, no matter how far ahead they are. I hate to say that, but think about it. What would you think, really, had you undergone what they did?
We are not about to run the table, and for the reasons I explained in my earlier post, it would be imprudent to invest that much in trying to. Our best hope lies elsewhere, and beyond.
“Fourth, the second half schedule is murder, as we have all known from the outset.”
I’m not sure if this is quite accurate, rath. While we certainly knew it would be the toughest part of the schedule, with Duke and Virginia twice, I wouldn’t characterize the prevailing thoughts and comments around here as viewing it as ‘murder’.
If I remember correctly, there was a sentiment of the ACC being down and North Carolina being very solid to potentially outstanding. I think maybe any thoughts about how very hard this last half would be may be affected by what we now know: some of these teams are better than we might have thought, the Heels haven’t done as well as we might have thought, and key injuries have occurred that we could not have imagined. I just think it seems tougher now than it did then.
As far as sitting everyone until they’re 100%, I can’t go along with that unless it’s the kind of injury that will never get well without complete rest, or unless it may risk further injury. Injury is a way of life in sports, and players have to play with some kind of ache and pain all the time. Certain players gradually get better, with proper treatment, even when they’re going through full practices and games. So I wouldn’t jump to any automatic conclusions that we maybe need to sacrifice some games for this to happen.
Upon further thought, I would qualify what I said in the previous post about resting players if it is the kind of injury that won’t heal without complete rest. The reality is some of these guys may have to play with nagging stuff until the season is over.
But the goal is to win every game, every time out. So if you can contribute…. in a positive way….and without further harm… then you should play. And there will be some games, here and there, when some guys can take a little break.
i agree with rath. the acc title is probably not attainable.
let’s rest guys or whatever to prepare for the ncaa’s.