Northwestern basketball announced Wednesday morning that sophomore Vic Law will miss the entire 2015-16 season due to a torn labrum. Here are the details of the injury, with quotes from Law, head coach Chris Collins and others.
More on Vic Law's injury
More on Vic Law's injury
- Law sustained the injury during the summer. Law doesn't remember exactly when the injury happened.
- Law initially tried to play through the injury. "As I kept playing," he said Wednesday, "it progressively got worse, and as I tried to attack it and keep going, it just kept getting worse... It was a really sharp, intense pain. I felt like my shoulder was moving around a lot as I played. As a basketball player, when you know you're limited, it's kind of hard."
- Law had an MRI on the shoulder about a month ago, and the results showed it was a torn labrum. "This is an injury that, if you can handle the pain, you can try to manage it by wearing a brace," Collins said. After getting the results, "We got a plan together trying to do rehab and everything," Law said. Collins said Law missed some practices and Northwestern's secret scrimmage. "We decided to play him in the exhibition game just to see," Collins said. "And I thought he played pretty well, but the next morning, it just was killing him."
- Collins, Law and the coaching staff met the day after the exhibition game against Quincy, and spoke with Law's parents on the phone. "Ultimately it was my decision, because no one knows my body like I know my body," Law said.
- Law will have the surgery some time next week, and the recovery is expected to take 4-6 months. Having the surgery now will allow Law to have most of the spring and all of the summer to get ready for next season.
- Collins said that if this kind of thing had happened in February, perhaps Law could have finished the season. "I mean, he was playing with it for a month. Most of the practices, he was still out there. So he was playing with it, it just got worse and worse, and it got to the point where he wasn't comfortable out there. He was thinking about it too much. So this was the right decision."
- Law will redshirt. The process of filing for a redshirt happens at the end of the year, but it won't be a problem for Law. He'll still have three years of eligibility left.
- One option that Collins and Law considered was having Law play the first few games of the season. "We knew with the redshirting rules that he had a little bit of time if he wanted to try to play through it," Collins said. But it became clear that the pain would be too much.
- Law has actually had the same injury before on his right shoulder. It's also the same injury that Tre Demps had during his freshman year at Northwestern. Collins also noted that it was similar to the injury Drew Crawford had in 2012.
- Collins, Law, Demps and Lindsey all said that the entire team will have to step up to fill the void left by Law, but Collins said this could mean more of Lindsey at small forward, it could mean Aaron Falzon and Nate Taphorn see more time at small forward, and Sanjay Lumpkin's minutes could see a spike. Lumpkin was out on the court well before practice working with coaches on his jump shot.
- Collins thinks Law's rebounding will be the toughest aspect of his game to replace. Demps agrees. "We have to gang rebound," Demps said. "Vic was our best rebounder."
Video courtesy of Northwestern Athletics