OMAHA (KMTV) — Multiple Creighton men's basketball players have battled injuries this season, and despite that, the team is finding ways to win tough games.
- At the Player's Era Festival in Las Vegas, Steven Ashworth and Ryan Kalkbrenner each missed a game because of injuries.
- Before the UNLV game Saturday, news broke that key contributor Pop Isaacs will need season-ending surgery. He was the Jays' leading scorer (27 points) in their upset over then-top-ranked Kansas.
- Ashworth says one of the keys to keep the momentum going despite is own struggles is to remind the team to stay positive and find joy in the game of basketball.
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
We often hear stories about athletes playing when they’re not feeling 100%.
A classic example: The Michael Jordan flu game in the 1997 NBA Finals.
Fast forward to this century, we saw the Creighton Bluejays do it as they took down the then-number 1 Kansas Jayhawks.
Top players weren’t at full strength… Steven Ashworth was sic, Ryan Kalkbrenner's been huring, and Pop Isaacs was battling an injury that will now require season-ending surgery.
This poses the question: what motivates an athlete to push themselves when they’re not at their best?
It's gotta be the love of competition.
It’s been a battle for Creighton men’s basketball to stay healthy.
Coach mac: “I don’t know if I’ve ever been part of a team that’s had this many things happen," head coach Greg McDermott said. "Going back to the start of practice in early September... I’m not sure we’ve had the whole team at a practice one time.”
That included against top-ranked Kansas who the Jays beat despite the adversity.
“it’s been a bunch of crazy things that are hard to imagine they’re taking place," McDermott said. "And the worst time for them to take place for us is during the stretch of really difficult games.”
Being a high-level athlete is taxing, so I talked with UNMC sports medicine medical director Dr. Matthew Tao: he’s an expert on the ways top-level competition impacts an athlete’s body.
"Just physically it’s a big step up because people are stronger, faster, so there’s a lot of demands on these kids’ time and their bodies," he said.
He saw players do it weekly when he worked with the New York Giants.
"As the season goes on in the NFL, everybody’s playing through something," Tao said. "Nobody is 100% healthy and I think that’s true for college athletes as well.”
"As much as Kalk and Steven have been dealing with their own issues, not once have they looked at me and said ‘I need to come out’ or ‘I need to do less,'" McDermott said of his seniors. "They recognize the importance not just of their presence as players but their presence as leaders. And without that you’d be in big trouble when adversity hits like this.”
"One of the leaders of our church said the joy in your life has little to do with your circumstances and everything to do with your focus," Ashworth said after beating UNLV Saturday. "Reminding the guys ‘hey we get to wake up every morning and look forward to playing basketball at the end of the day.
"Although there is some adversity, in the grand scheme of things it’s nothing life or death, and that’s something to be grateful for in and of itself. The guys respond really really well to the fact that we should have joy in all of this.”
