FSU basketball: Injuries continue to impact ‘Noles 2021-22 season
By Kelvin Hunt
FSU basketball (13-9, 6-6 ACC) continues to battle the injury bug as they will likely be without a key team member for the rest of the year.
FSU head coach Leonard Hamilton announced Anthony Polite underwent surgery on his wrist Monday. Polite suffered the injury trying to cushion a fall to the floor in a game recently and will likely not return in the regular season.
Polite averages nearly 10 ppg and is the second leading rebounder at 5.5 per game. The Noles have lost four consecutive games, which began as starter Malik Osborne suffered an injury that forced him to miss the rest of the season.
Naheem McLeod will miss the remainder of the season with a broken hand. FSU has played without starters RayQuan Evans and Caleb Mills.
Starter John Butler is battling an ankle injury that saw him play only eight minutes in the last contest against Wake Forest.
Camron Fletcher, a valuable member off of the bench, is dealing with an ankle injury as well. Both are questionable for Wednesday’s game against the Pittsburgh Panthers.
Leonard Hamilton says he isn't sure if FSU will have John Butler or Cam'Ron Fletcher for tomorrow's game vs. Pitt. Both turned their ankles vs. Wake.
— Curt Weiler (@CurtMWeiler) February 8, 2022
"I'm hopeful that we'll have both of them. I feel better about Cam's tweak than I do John's but we won't know until game time."
That means the Noles could be without three of their original starting five. However, Caleb Mills is nearly back to 100 percent after battling tonsillitis.
He’s FSU’s leading scorer, and the lack of offense from the team overall was their downfall against Clemson. The defense had been the culprit during most of the losing streak, so Leonard Hamilton will be forced to play more young guys with injuries mounting.
It’s an area where freshman Matthew Cleveland needs to emerge after falling off a cliff in the past few games. I wrote about how well he had played during FSU’s six-game winning streak, but he’s been wilding inefficient on the offensive end.
RayQuan Evans needs to find the form he had before missing a couple of games while grieving the death of his brother. FSU has competed hard despite the mounting injuries, and Pittsburgh (8-16, 3-10 ACC) coming to the Tucker Center could be just what they need to get back in the win column.
They will host the Panthers Wednesday at 9 p.m. ET on the ACC Network.
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