Cincinnati Basketball: Shaq Thomas Day-To-Day With Bone Bruise, Ankle Sprain

When Cincinnati Bearcats senior wing Shaq Thomas went down early in the second half during their win over UConn on Thursday night, UC fans watching this game collectively held their breath. By the looks of it, the way he collapsed to the floor in agony, it looked like he shattered everything from his pinky toe to his hip.

At the time I didn’t want to go into great detail about what happened. I wanted to focus more on the game itself and wait to comment further on Shaq with more information inevitably forthcoming. And more information is what we have.

The good news, his career as a Bearcat isn’t over. A bone bruise and ankle sprain with the “day-to-day” tag is about the best outcome we could have had coming out of his injury, all things considered. I mean, he wasn’t able to leave the court under his own power. It could have been any number of career ending injuries that had befallen him.

But it sounds like if Shaq stays off his feet for a few days, maybe a couple of weeks, we could see him back on the court relatively quickly.

Plus his understudy, Jacob Evans, has proven that he’s more than capable of shouldering an extended load on the wing if the coaches need him to. Coming into this game the true freshman was already playing about the same minutes as Shaq anyways. Now he’ll just need to play a little more and Cincinnati probably won’t see a massive drop off in production. In fact, they might get more out of the position with Evans seeing more paying time.

Regardless, the best we can hope for is that Shaq doesn’t have a major setback in the coming days and weeks such that he can rejoin the team.