Injury Report: Musselman provides update on Robinson, Smith, Iyiola
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FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas is down to only nine available scholarship players for the upcoming stretch of the basketball season.
It was announced Sunday night that freshman guard KK Robinson will miss the rest of the year after having foot surgery. He joins Justin Smith (ankle) and Abayomi Iyiola (ACL) as Razorbacks dealing with injuries, plus Little Rock transfer Kamani Johnson, who is awaiting a decision from the NCAA on his waiver request for immediate eligibility.
This is nothing new for head coach Eric Musselman, though, as Arkansas had only nine scholarship players all of last season and that number shrunk whenever there was an injury - such as the one that forced Isaiah Joe to miss extended time.
“I mean, ideally you’d like to have as many players as possible available,” Musselman admitted, before giving an optimistic outlook moving forward. “It’s no big deal. As long as we’ve got seven, we’re good.”
Although he was averaging only 8.4 minutes, Robinson had appeared in all 11 games before missing Saturday’s blowout win over Georgia and the impact of his absence will be particularly felt in the Razorbacks’ practices.
JD Notae is naturally an off guard who’s been asked to play some point guard this season and that is expected to increase, as well as the playing time for fellow freshman Davonte Davis.
“KK has had an incredible work ethic behind closed doors, so it changes our practice pretty significantly,” Musselman said. “Now his reps will go to Devo at that backup or third point guard, because obviously JD is going to play more point guard now without KK.”
The most significant loss was Justin Smith, who needed a procedure on his ankle that he injured during the SEC opener at Auburn. He had the surgery on Jan. 1 and it was announced it’ll keep him out 3-6 weeks.
Now 10 days into that recovery, Smith had yet to do anything - even non-contact work - with the team as of Musselman’s Zoom videoconference with the media. He met with his doctors Saturday, though, and has done some rehab work on the underwater treadmill.
“We’d like him to start to try to come back,” Musselman said. “I’d love it if he could do some non-contact stuff, but I don’t know if it’s just going to be shooting drills today or what until they give me the OK, I guess.”
Smith will need a couple days of non-contact drills before transitioning into normal contact practices and eventually returning to the floor.
The other injury was actually the first Arkansas sustained, as Iyiola tore his right ACL before the start of team activities. It was announced at the very end of July and the UA gave it a 5-6 month recovery timeframe.
That would put him returning around this time, which is what Musselman was optimistically hoping for, but despite him working really hard in rehab, the 6-foot-9 transfer from Stetson isn’t quite ready.
“He’s still got a few things that the doctor would like from a strength standpoint,” Musselman said. “He’s getting close. I would probably guess we’re looking at…maybe February, first week or two in February, is when I think he’ll be cleared.”
If there is a silver lining to the Smith and Robinson injuries happening when they did, it’s that a pair of freshmen - Davis and Jaylin Williams - have seen their roles increase and seem to be playing with more confidence.
Musselman said both players have learned the system and it’s led to an unusual increase of playing time as Arkansas enters SEC play, rather than the typical decrease of playing time for freshmen.
“Our last road trip, I met with…the three of them - not Moses (Moody) - but I met with the other three and had a long talk with them about the importance of those guys and their development and keeping a positive mind and how much we believed in them,” Musselman said. “It wasn’t always going to equate to the minutes they might want or what they expected, but keep working and they’ve done that.”
The Razorbacks hit the road for a pair of games this week, first traveling to Baton Rouge, La., to play LSU at 6 p.m. CT Wednesday. That game will be televised on ESPN2.