You may have missed it what with all the football madness and such, but it likely won't come as much of a surprise; a Louisville basketball player will likely miss the rest of the season because of an injury.
Andre McGee, who has already spent the better part of the season in street clothes because of a knee injury, suffered a strained quadricep tendon in his right leg on Friday and may end up taking a medical redshirt.
"Andre's not doing well," Rick Pitino said at his weekly press conference. "I'm not sure what we're going to do there. If he's not going to come back anytime soon, Andre has asked me to redshirt him."
McGee spent the offseason getting himself into the best physical condition of his life, and after a stellar performance in the team's season-opening victory over Northwestern State he appeared to be the man to handle the majority of the Cardinals' ball handling duties this year. But he hurt his knee late in that game and had surgery the next week. He has played in just four games since.
Other notes from the Pitino press conference:
---Rick said that Brandon Jenkins will move back into the starting lineup (replacing Jerry Smith) because he feels the team needs more experience on the court.
Pitino took Jenkins out of the starting lineup two weeks ago because he said he thought the senior guard would produce more coming off the bench. A senior who averaged over 11 points a game last season, BJ is shooting just 31 percent overall (22-71) and 25% (10-40) from three-point range while averaging only 4.4 points per game.
Jenkins productivity has remained surprisingly low since his demotion (2-19 from the field in those four games), and now he's being reinserted into the starting five under the pretense that the team needs some form of experience that it's been sorely lacking for the past two weeks.
Whatever.
---Moving on to the always depressing Derrick Caracter saga (For oh so many reasons).
Pitino said that since returning to the team after being sent home early for Christmas, Caracter still isn't doing the things that he's supposed to do and that the talented freshman will likely not make the trip to Tampa for the team's game against South Florida. Paul Rogers confirmed that Caracter, indeed did not accompany the team to Florida for tonight's contest.
"It's not going well," Pitino said of the Caracter saga. "There are some things I'm happy with and he's getting better with, but he's just got so many things he has to overcome to be a basketball player. He's very lethargic. He doesn't understand what work is all about; he just doesn't get it. I never thought I'd have any shot at going straight to heaven, that I'd have to spend a lot of time in purgatory. Now for the first time I think I have a shot."
Pitino is, however, pleased with the spindly duo of junior Terrance Farley and sophomore Jonathan Huffman who stand to benefit the most from Caracter's absence.
"Derrick wouldn't make a difference whether we beat South Florida or not," Pitino said. "And right now I'm at the point where I'm very pleased with Terrance and Jonathan evolving, and Farley needs to play. I can't be overly concerned with being Father Flanagan. I have to be concerned with winning basketball games."
Whatever.