Marquette All-American Guard Tyler Kolek to miss remainder of regular season
The news that Marquette fans were dreading to hear was released on Monday morning. Their star point guard will miss the final two games of the regular season due to an oblique injury that he suffered early in the second half of last week’s game against Providence. Oblique injuries can happen on the most standard of plays in any sport, and there wasn’t much out of the ordinary here either, grasping his side after an overhead pass up the floor.
Kolek leads the country in assists (7.6 apg) to go along with 15.0 points and 4.7 rebounds per game while shooting 48.6% from the floor.
When asked about the status of Kolek’s injury in the postgame presser, head coach Shaka Smart didn’t have much information, stating, “...I don’t know exactly the extent of his injury, you guys saw it, he went out there, he wasn’t able to stay in the game…he’s with the training staff now.” Similar communication was given after he was held out of Saturday’s road game at Creighton.
The situation starts to become a little more clear after Monday morning’s press release, stating that Kolek will miss the final two games on the Big East schedule and will be reevaluated ahead of the Big East Conference Tournament next week in New York. This is another bit of the update that Marquette fans will not be wanting to hear. Oblique injuries can linger and are extremely hard to play through. The Golden Eagles will need Kolek in order to make a strong run through the Big East Tournament and make their case for a higher seed in the NCAA Tournament.
Marquette’s highly anticipated home finale on Wednesday against UConn will have a bit of the air taken out of it without their star point guard. Marquette’s senior night at Fiserv Forum will honor one of the best tandems in the country, Tyler Kolek and Oso Ighodaro.
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Sure to have a thunderous reception, Kolek will be honored for his fabulous Marquette career beside Ighodaro, but will have to watch from the bench as his teammates take on the tall task of getting revenge on Big East leaders and one of the top teams in the country, UConn.