Rick Pitino officially announced Tuesday that guard Kevin Ware would take a medical redshirt and sit out the rest of the Louisville Cardinals’ season.
“I think he will get back to where he was,” the Cardinals’ head coach said. “It was a bad break, but it’s not a Kobe [Bryant] situation with the Achilles or an ACL. It’s just a bad break that needs time.”
Ware suffered a gruesome broken leg in Louisville’s Elite Eight matchup against Duke in the NCAA tournament last March, but he had surgery and was close to 100 percent when the season began.
The 6’3’’ junior played in an actual game for the first time since the injury on November 7 in an exhibition contest against Pikeville and received a standing ovation from the Cardinal faithful.
“It was great. I’ve never felt like that before,” he said at the time. “I’ve been waiting for that moment.”
Ware made his official return to action in Louisville’s third game of the season, a matchup against Cornell. After that, Ware saw spotty playing time in the Cardinals’ early season games, and he averaged just 1.7 points in 5.9 minutes per game
Against Missouri State, in Louisville’s tenth game, Ware was kicked in his right shin, the same place that he had suffered the broken leg against Duke.
After sitting out for two games, the Cardinals and Ware decided that it would be best for him to take a redshirt and return completely healthy for the start of the 2014-15 campaign.
Making the move now makes sense because NCAA rules permit a player to redshirt only if they play in less than 30 percent of their team’s games. Ware had already played in nine of the Cardinals 31 scheduled games, so playing in one more would have disqualified him from redshirting this year and therefore would have lost him a season of eligibility.
Ware didn’t seem to have the same quick burst as he had a season ago, when he averaged 4.5 points PPG in 16.6 minutes per game. Pitino, never afraid to speak his mind, gave a frank assessment of Ware’s role as a player on the team this season.
“Ware is not a factor on our basketball team,” Pitino said. “He hasn’t been this season.”
Fans will have to wait until next season to see the player that, through his strength in the face of a brutal injury, helped galvanize the Cardinals and sparked them to a National Championship.
Dylan Sinn is a freelance contributor for CraveOnline Sports. You can follow him on Twitter @DylanSinn or “like” CraveOnline Sports on Facebook.
Photo Credit: Getty
