JerShon Cobb Suspended For 2012-2013 Season

Bad basketball news on a Friday afternoon: JerShon Cobb has been suspended for "violations of team policy", and will not play in the 2012-2013 season.

Obviously, it's not fully clear what Cobb did wrong: I'd imagine a grades thing would probably end up with him suspended until he improved his grades, while something more serious would lead to him being kicked off the team and not merely suspended, but the quote from Bill Carmody in the press release certainly implied grades. Teddy Greenstein quickly tweeted that it wasn't a legal issue and that Cobb plans on remaining enrolled. Inside NU tweets that the operative word is "violations" - as in not just one violation. Hopefully this doesn't inspire Cobb to transfer, as rumors had been quietly floated about that in the past.

Cobb didn't play a huge role last season - he missed 12 games with injury, and tended to hang in single digits with the exception of a great run towards the end of the year where he played great against Iowa and dropped a career-high 24 in the devastating overtime Big Ten Tournament loss to Minnesota. But he was expected to help fill the scoring load vacated by John Shurna while continuing to be one of the team's top defenders. His minutes will probably be taken by a hopefully healthy Tre Demps, Reggie Hearn playing in position after a year basically at power forward, and perhaps freshman Sanjay Lumpkin - although NU has a lot of talent coming in, most of it is at the forward or center spots.

Cobb will still have his junior and senior years of eligibility left if he opts to stay with the Wildcats.