Harrison Barnes Held from Practice with an Injury

Some days, I think Roy Williams just likes to mess with the fans.

On his radio show Monday night, in response to a question about Harrison Barnes' injury Saturday night against UNLV, the coach said, "If we had a game today, he would not have played." Barns rolled his ankle diving for a loose ball in the second half of the game, only to return to play most of the last eight minutes. He then left the stadium on crutches.

As a someone who isn't a medical professional, has had no contact with the team, and is completely unqualified to have an opinion on this, I'd speculate that it will be very tough to keep Barnes out of the games this week. They will if necessary, of course, but Barnes has a competitive streak a mile long, and is going to want to play. He may be a step or two sow, and I'd expect to see him a lot less in the subsequent December games. Also look to see more playing time for Reggie Bullock and P.J. Hairston; the former added a nice dribble-drive to his repertoire in recent games, while the latter has been very hot from beyond the arc.

Williams also took time to criticize Rams Club members who sold their tickets to UNLV fans, as he had a particularly obnoxious Runnin' Rebel sitting next to the coaches' wives. He hasn't mellowed much from the similar incident against Presbyterian two years ago, and is out to find the donor who gave up the seats.

Two things about that though. One, the seats really close to the bench at visiting arenas are usually distributed at the game by UNC's sports information director, and therefore can't be sold. And second, I wonder how Williams' quest to suss out the seller contrasts with the schools own attempts to partner with StubHub to create their own ticket-selling site. Williams might see a lot more unfriendly colors in the stands due to the university's own policies.

(Full disclosure: SB Nation has their own ticket-selling affiliation, with TikIQ. They produce pretty graphs I may occasionally use, should I want to right a story about how cheap the Wisconsin game appears to be in comparison with the Kentucky one.)