North Carolina State University Athletics
Injuries and Illness Continue to Plague Wolfpack
1/19/2001 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
RALEIGH, N.C. -- NC State men's basketball coach Herb Sendek must be wondering if perhaps he's building up some collateral in the luck department. He might also be asking himself, "where's the payback?"
There seems to be no end to a four-and-a-half year stretch of player losses due to injuries, suspensions and illness. With guard Archie Miller (leg) and Michael Bell (knees) on the shelf, and senior center Ron Kelley hobbled by a bad knee, the last thing NC State needed was more bad news. Brace yourself: here we go again.
Senior Center Cornelius Williams, who made the first start of his career against Georgia Tech on Tuesday, has reinjured the very same hand that he broke earlier in the preseason. And freshman walk-on Will Roach will be out for an indefinite period of time after being diagnosed with chicken pox.
The net effect of their absence is that the Wolfpack hasn't had 10 players with which to practice this week. It's kind of hard to scrimmage with only nine guys.
"We were down to just a handful of guys on [Thursday] that were actually able to practice," Sendek said. "I thought Cornelius broke his hand again in the Georgia Tech game. We found out that it wasn't broken after having a test done at the hospital. But he did reaggravate it enough that he's uncertain in terms of what he's able to do."
Upon hearing of Roach's misfortune, the training staff quickly tried to find out how many of the Pack's players had been infected by chicken pox before. Most said that they had already been infected, thus making them immune to the viral disease, which usually strikes during childhood.
It's still not known when Miller, who has a stress fracture in his lower left leg, will return.
"We'll just keep checking on how he feels," Sendek said. "The best case would be that next week we would check it, it's not as point-tender and he tries to comeback. It's also possible, but I hope not likely, that it could take six weeks. That pretty much carves out the remainder of our season. Maybe somewhere in between is where it will fall. Arch is a tough minded person, and if anybody can deal with the discomfort, it's him."
Miller, who has missed the last two games, is currently the nation's most accurate three-point shooter (62 percent).
Kelley's routine probably won't change for the rest of the season. The 6-9 senior, who missed three games after undergoing arthroscopic knee surgery in December, is being held out of most practices. Since returning on January sixth, Kelley has averaged just nine minutes per game.
Over the last four-plus seasons, 12 different Wolfpack players have missed a combined 161 game due to injuries.
