South Carolina provides injury status update on Justin Minaya
Justin Minaya’s status for the rest of year is still uncertain, But he won’t be in a South Carolina basketball uniform Wednesday night.
The Gamecocks announced Minaya will miss the game at Ole Miss after suffering a thumb injury on his shooting hand in Saturday’s win over Missouri.
Minaya, who’s started 56 of his 58 games at USC, took a medical redshirt last year because of a knee injury in November. The 6-foot-5 sophomore was rounding back in good form this season — see nine points, seven rebounds, two assists a game in SEC play — until he collided with Mizzou’s Tray Jackson on Saturday while attempting to offensive rebound. He exited the game with 32.6 seconds left in the first half, but returned for 13 second half minutes with his thumb taped.
The injury, however, was a serious one.
“If he was a football player, they’d club it and he’d play the rest of the year and they’d fix it after the year,” Carolina coach Frank Martin said Monday. “But it looks like it’s going to need surgery to get repaired. So we’re trying to figure out how to manage that moving forward.”
Minaya is fifth on USC in scoring (7.8 points per game) and second in rebounds, assists and blocks.
The Gamecocks (13-8, 5-3 SEC) return to action Wednesday at Ole Miss (10-11, 1-7). It’s then when Martin will have a starting lineup that won’t include Minaya for the first time this season.
USC could go small with three guards and add Jair Bolden to the backcourt with Jermaine Couisnard and A.J. Lawson. The Gamecocks could also shift sophomore Keyshawn Bryant to the small forward position, his spot as a freshman, and plug either freshman Jalyn McCreary or Wildens Leveque at power forward next to Maik Kotsar.
South Carolina went 13-14 in Minaya’s absence last season. He’s the third starter to miss time this year, following Bryant (nine game for knee and head injuries) and Couisnard (one game for back injury).
USC has won five of six games entering Wednesday.
“It’s part of the equation when you coach basketball at South Carolina,” Martin said. “There’s a large cloud that sits over this campus that constantly just craps on you any time your team plays well. ... It’s unbelievable. But you can’t sit around and dwell on the good, the bad, the indifferent. You got to actually manage adversity and handle what’s in front of you.”
NEXT
What: South Carolina (13-8, 5-3 SEC) at Ole Miss (10-11, 1-7)
When: 7 p.m. Wednesday
Where: Oxford, Mississippi
TV: SEC Network
Radio: 107.5 The Game in Columbia area
