North Carolina State University Athletics
Levi Watkins Begins Long Road Back
2/12/2002 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Feb. 12, 2002
By Tony Haynes
Raleigh, N.C.-With the NC State men's basketball team playing so well, it's easy to forget that the Wolfpack is actually putting together its best season in years without a key contributor.
By the middle of December, Levi Watkins had already established himself as a valuable commodity, especially on the defensive end of the floor. Standing 6-7 and weighing 220 pounds, the freshman from Rockville, Maryland was strong enough to defend larger post players, while also possessing enough quickness to guard smaller perimeter players. His steady improvement on offense was also evident through the first month and a half of the season. By the time NC State was to open its conference schedule against Maryland on December 30, he was already the Pack's first frontline reserve off the bench.
Then it happened.
Falling awkwardly after making a short jumper in the second half against the Terrapins, Watkins screamed out in agony. The grim diagnosis 24 hours later only confirmed the worst fears of team doctors: torn anterior cruciate ligament. A promising freshman season was over.
Two weeks later, Watkins underwent a knee reconstruction, a difficult surgery that would be followed by an equally challenging 6-9 month rehabilitation. It was only a few weeks after the operation that Watkins was slowly climbing the lower level stairs at the Entertainment and Sports Arena while his teammates practiced down below. The long road back had begun.
"He's doing great," said NC State Director of Sports Medicine Charlie Rozanski, who is overseeing Watkins' rehab. "It's amazing how far that surgery has come. Dr. [Wally] Andrew and Dr. [Bob] Wyker, who performed the surgery, did a tremendous job. He's up, moving around and on his way towards getting well."
The successful surgery, combined with Watkins' well-chronicled toughness and determination, should lead to a safe and full recovery. Along with climbing stairs at the ESA, he has already begun to do leg extension exercises in the weight room. Rozanski adds that Watkins will actually be running again within the next month or so.
"The biggest thing right now is that he's regaining his range of motion," Rozanski said. "If anybody sees him walking around on the floor you'll see he's still limping a little bit, but our goal right now is to get his full motion back and to get him to do his activities of daily living without any problem. From there it's just a question of getting him stronger and giving it time. The graft that they use to replace the ACL takes time to get a blood supply so that it can become dynamic living tissue again. That's why these ACL reconstructions take so much time, it's not necessarily that they're not physically capable of going back, it's more a question of making sure that the graft is healthy."
Because he saw action in more than 20 percent of NC State's game prior to suffering the injury, Watkins is not eligible for a medical redshirt, meaning he'll have three years of eligibility remaining when he returns next fall. But if everything goes as planned, he'll be at full strength when the 2002-03 Wolfpack gathers for preseason practice next October.
Said Rozanski: "Anytime someone has surgery you're always concerned about what level they'll come back to afterwards, but there's certainly no reason to expect that he won't come back to his pre-injury level."
