Ben RozakJust when it seemed as if the Cal Poly men’s basketball team couldn’t have any worse luck, it was struck with another blow – or more specifically, another injury.
Mustangs sophomore guard Lorenzo Keeler is out indefinitely with a possible stress fracture, Cal Poly head coach Kevin Bromley said Monday.
Keeler joins senior Dawin Whiten and junior Chaz Thomas as injured Cal Poly guards sidelined indefinitely. The three have combined for 39 starts this season.
“Right now I have two guards in the program,” Bromley said. “I have a walk-on (sophomore Rick Higgins) and a starting guard in Trae Clark. So right now we’re really low in guards. And that’s what was supposed to be the strength of this basketball team.”
Bromley said Keeler, who limped in practice Sunday, “can’t even walk on the foot” and is now wearing a protective boot, first suffered pain against Cal State Fullerton on Feb. 9.
He was administered an MRI Monday.
“It has all the signs of a stress fracture,” Bromley said. “They don’t think it’s a stress fracture but there’s inflamed tissue around the bone.”
Whiten has missed four-straight games because of plantar fasciitis in his right foot, for which season-ending surgery has been scheduled for Monday, Bromley said.
Thomas, who was on the bench in street clothes Thursday in a 60-47 loss at UC Santa Barbara, because of what was initially described as an ankle sprain, has “a ligament problem in the ankle,” according to Bromley.
Members of Cal Poly’s training staff “either think it’s a total tear or just a sprained ligament,” Bromley said. “They can’t tell, but he has pinpoint pain and can barely walk.”
Phone messages left Monday for Keeler weren’t returned, and Thomas could not be reached for comment.
In the absence of Whiten and Thomas on Thursday, the Mustangs committed a season-high 24 turnovers. Clark distributed five of their eight assists, but no other starters had any, and no one else had more than one.
“I had to jump their butts pretty good in practice today,” Bromley said Monday. “I thought they were feeling sorry for themselves, because they see Chaz can barely even walk and Lorenzo came out in a boot, so obviously they’re like, ‘Now what?’ You can either feel sorry for yourself and have a pity party, or we can rally.”
Cal Poly will get its first chance without all three at 7 p.m. Wednesday at UC Davis.
“They’re definitely at a disadvantage without those three guys,” said UC Davis associate head coach Greg Clink. “They can get you double-figures (in points) any night.”
To compensate for the backcourt void, Bromley said, the Mustangs will likely resort to playing a defensive zone more often, and turn to Higgins, freshman guard Shawn Lewis and sophomore forward Charles Anderson to fill in at shooting guard aside Clark.
Helping out at small forward could be 6-foot-8 senior Dreshawn Vance, Bromley explained, while senior Matt Hanson and junior Titus Shelton will continue to man their respective starting power forward and center spots.
“We’re just going to have to slow it down and play big,” Bromley said. “We were long (in practice). We covered a lot of ground; we rebounded the basketball well. It might work pretty well.”
The Mustangs, who have shot 47.5 percent from inside the 3-point arc, could actually benefit from being forced to be more patient offensively and feed the ball inside more, Bromley said.
“Maybe it’ll make us work the ball longer,” he said. “And we’ll just pound the ball inside and play really deliberately.”
UC Davis, last in the Big West Conference, has lost eight straight, but twice by five or fewer points, including the most recent shortcoming, 77-73 to UCSB on Saturday.
“We need to beat the teams we’re supposed to beat,” Bromley said. “This conference is crazy. Night-in, night-out, there are close games. It’s wide open still.”
Exemplifying the conference’s unpredictability is sophomore Aggies forward Dominic Calegari, who scored at least 10 points just once in his first 15 games this season, but has established back-to-back career highs by netting 25 and 26 points Thursday and Saturday.
“He’s playing with a lot of confidence and shooting the ball really well,” Clink said. “He’s a good athlete and can score inside and out. He’s long, quick and athletic and does a good job of creating shots for himself.”
However, the match-up posed by the 6-foot-9, 220 pound Berkeley native Cal Poly “almost got” as a walk-on, Bromley said, could play into the sixth-place Mustangs’ hands.
“For us it’s not too bad, because he plays in the high post and they stick him out a lot,” Bromley clarified.
The Aggies (8-17, 2-10) enter the contest led in scoring by junior guard Vince Oliver, who averages 12.1 points per outing on 42.1-percent shooting from the floor. He has started all 25 of UC Davis’ games and is second in the conference in minutes per game, with 32.7.
“We’ll have a tough time matching up a little bit because of our speed, so we’ll have to play zone, which kind of plays into their hands a little bit because they shoot the 3 pretty well,” Bromley said.
UC Davis, meanwhile, will be looking to capitalize on its quickness advantage.
In the teams’ previous meeting, Thomas made 6 of 8 shots from the floor, including 4 of 5 from 3-point range in the Mustangs’ 79-67 win Jan. 24.
“Just from what Thomas did against us alone, they’re obviously going to miss his scoring,” Clink said. “If he was healthy we’d definitely be preparing to try to get him under control.”
Also key in Cal Poly’s win was Vance, who dunked seven times en route to an 8-for-9 performance on his way to a career-high 19 points.
“He was a tough match-up for us,” Clink said. “A lot of those (eight baskets) were point-blank. We’ve got to try to make him catch it farther from the basket and make him work harder for his points.”
Shelton could also attract extra defensive attention from the Aggies.
“He’s kind of the backbone of that team,” Clink said. “He’s strong inside, and a good post presence. We anticipate them going to him more now that (the three guards) are out.”
The Aggies have struggled to stay healthy in their own right, and have recently been without the services of junior center Michael Boone and junior forward Jesse Lopez-Low, who combined for more than 16 minutes per game through the 14 contests each of them played this season.
On Saturday, six Aggies played at least 23 minutes, while only one other played more than seven.
“Because of our lack of depth we haven’t been able to find five or six guys playing well right at the same time,” Clink said.
Cal Poly (9-14, 4-7) knows all too well about dwindling depth charts, but has to stay upbeat, Bromley said, especially in a conference in which there is no apparent clear-cut favorite.
“You never know,” he said. “That’s why I don’t want them to pout and have this pity party.”