Franz Wagner to miss 4-6 weeks with wrist injury

I’m afraid we already know the answer. Hope I am wrong.

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I wonder if Johns is out as well as Franz for some time… 1. As mentioned, can Nunez play a lick and 2. What about Cole Bajema? I doubt he can play but these could desperate times.

If johns injury was an extended timeline there would have been a news release like with Franz imo.

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I tend to agree with this. Basketball players sprain their ankles quite a bit. If Johns was expected to miss significant game time, a release would likely go out. He might miss the scrimmage or exhibition but it feels a bit early to worry about much more than that with the season 2.5 weeks off.

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You didn’t. adamsmith86 did. Responded to the wrong post–saw his post quoted in your response. Sorry.

The one positive is this team has some veteran leadership. That can go a long way in situations like this. I’m sure Zavier isn’t thinking how will we ever beat Creighton or how will we cope in the Bahamas without Franz. It’s part of sports and someone will need to step up obviously. Whether it’s getting more out of the big 3 or someone stepping up given the minutes that Franz would have played.

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Yeah I’m not really worried about Johns’ injury, I’m just a masochist so I wanted to play out a scenario that he was out.

Doesn’t really matter what X is thinking if the other players can not properly step up.

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Well in that case, if Johns is good to go, we’re still rolling out a solid lineup. Depth will be tough.

I hate to bring this up guys I really do… but man having Jalen wilson on the roster right now would be nice :sleepy:

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Yeah I was just responding to the question about 6 losses too. But I did say 5 is very possible, which sort of presents the same problem. 5 is still a lot of non conference losses. And based on your scenario, Southern Miss wouldn’t give them a quality NC win for the tournament resume.

Obviously putting the cart way before the horse, but other than the 3 main vets, this is probably the worst loss they could have. Scoring is going to be hard to come by.

We don’t know who will step up if anybody. Adversity hits teams all the time. You just never know how a team will respond but having veteran leadership never hurts.

If he can’t, then there is likely another scholarship available for 2020. For non first year redshirts, it is almost like you need to show something by two years. I know that ended up happening a few times under Beilein.

Realize I’m one of the lest optimistic Eli guys on this board, but 25+ minutes a game of Eli Brooks makes me throw up in my mouth a little.

A constructive observation would be that having Wagner allowed us to have the luxury of the Eli/DeJulius competition of being an “either/or” situation - one of them just needed to be playable. Now, they both really do.

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In terms of the Simpson, Brooks, Livers, Johns, Teske lineup, I have a couple thoughts. First of all, the depth there is gonna be bad, so foul trouble mitigation and getting decent minutes from the backups will be key. Secondly, that’s a pretty darn good defensive lineup. Thirdly, if Johns can’t carry some weight on offense then wow… Livers has his shots cut out for him :joy:

I agree that it’s a bad loss. And maybe we’ll have 5 losses OOC with no quality wins. But there are some factors which mitigate against that as well–Creighton and Oregon are at home, and Oregon is extremely likely to be without N’faly Dante when we play them (and we’ll have Franz back). We also might play Oregon in Atlantis on a neutral court, that time without Dante for sure. The three key OOC games now for me are Creighton, Oregon at home, and Iowa State in the first round at Atlantis (if we win that, all of our Atlantis losses, however many, will likely be losses to pre-season top 15 teams. Creighton in particular is the key, since Franz may well be back for the rest.

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Hey well, when we win the Big Ten regular season title with Franz on the floor, they’ll have to ignore the OOC mess, right?

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No mention of Bajema anywhere. I feel like he kind of has to play minutes with Wagner out, especially if Johns is gone for an extended period of time.

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Brooks will certainly get his chance now. If you’re in the “I love Eli” fan club like me, this is a silver lining on the dark cloud.

I wouldn’t assume that this hurts us much in November because Franz would have been playing through some rookie mistakes anyway. Probably does hurts us for Dec/Jan when Franz gets his first game experience.

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Going to venture a guess that DeJulius, Bajema, Nunez, Castleton and Johns will also be battling some rookie mistakes.

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