Despite the Northeastern men’s basketball team’s commanding 21-point lead at halftime against Suffolk University Tuesday night, the buzz in the stands and on the Husky sideline was the MRI results of sophomore point guard Jose Juan Barea, who suffered a knee injury in the season opener at URI two Fridays ago.
While little was known about the injury before the results came in, word quickly spread that the Huskies leader has a Lateral Meniscus tear and could miss as few as four weeks, or as much as the entire season.
The meniscus is a piece of cartilage that separates the femur and tibia bones. For the most part, the meniscus has no blood supply, so when it tears it is unable to undergo the normal healing process that happens almost everywhere else in the body. Barea tore his meniscus causing a flap, or fragment, to get caught in between the two bones, which, in turn, caused swelling and discomfort and prevented him from being able to fully extend his knee.
Although the MRI revealed that there was a tear, doctors still don’t know how big it actually is. Barea will undergo arthroscopic surgery Thursday to determine the severity of the injury, and the amount of time the Huskies will be without their preseason All-Conference point guard.
Depending on the results of Thursday’s surgery, there are two possible outcomes: the worst-case scenario has the doctors finding a tear in which the flap is too big and must be sewn back in place, causing Barea to miss the remainder of the season.
The best-case scenario has the doctors finding a small flap that can be snipped off – clearing the area between the bones and enabling Barea to extend his knee without discomfort. In that event, Barea will be expected to miss only between four and six weeks.
After playing three games with the injury, Barea made it clear that he’ll do just about anything to play, but with future injury and his ability to practice in question, the team has to be realistic.
“I think if it were up to Jose, he’d play in the games and deal with the swelling afterwards,” said coach Ron Everhart. “With such a long season, the doctors think that just won’t work.”
In the four games in which Barea played, the Huskies were 2-2, with Barea averaging 17 points and 6.25 assists per game. In his last game, a huge 91-84 upset of Big East member West Virginia, Barea scored 19 points and tied a career-high with 10 assists.
“It’s a tough injury because he was playing so well and the team was finally starting to get some chemistry going,” Everhart said. “It’s an obvious obstacle for us either way it turns out, but hopefully we can overcome it.”
With guard already being the thinnest position for the Dogs after preseason injuries to Aaron Davis and Adrian Martinez, many different players are going to have to step up and play new roles on the team.
Freshman D’won Youmans will most certainly see his average of 17 minutes per game increase and forward Javorie Wilson played a significant amount of time at shooting guard in Tuesdays win over Suffolk.
“We have a lot of guys that can play,” said Wilson. “Of course the loss is going to hurt us, but nobody came here to sit the bench, they came to play basketball and now they have the chance.”
