As If The Pac-12 Didn't Take Enough Losses This Season, Oregon Just Likely Lost Bol Bol For The Season
Well, this is just terrible news coming out West. We really haven’t seen Oregon at full strength yet this year with Louis King missing games early with an injury and then Bol Bol dealing with the foot injury. The two freshmen when healthy were expected to make Oregon the favorite to win the Pac-12, no matter how bad the league has looked.
That all changes now with Bol likely out for the season.
It also changes the Pac-12. Most people agreed that it seemed to be a 2-bid league with Oregon and Arizona State as the two favorites to make the NCAA Tournament, maybe Washington. That alone is a joke for a power 6 conference in college basketball. I get that Arizona is in a rebuilding year after going through all the FBI and recruiting shit. I get that USC has dealt with injuries to key freshmen. But, UCLA has been a disaster. Cal can’t figure anything out. Oregon State sucks. Washington State is trash. Utah is extremely down this year. Colorado just can’t get quality wins. It’s a mess. Now you lose one of the key players on a team that looked to be the favorite to win the Pac-12 and you’re talking about possibly a 1-bid league from a power conference. That’s almost unheard of.
If you’re an NBA fan looking at this, it’s obviously big news here to. Granted I was never as high on Bol as the consensus due to his lack of defense/ability to move laterally/weakness in the post, this is huge news. You’re going to see a process of his agent and team try to likely withhold as much information as possible of this foot injury. It happens every draft where there’s a guy with some lingering injury and he doesn’t release medicals. You’re going to see teams try to make a huge effort to get these medicals, because a big with a lingering foot injury can be quite the problem to say the least. You’ll hear a list of teams that received medicals and that’s essentially just trying to get news out there so a team takes him earlier or whatever. It happens every draft cycle.
As for Oregon, a lot falls on Louis King and Payton Pritchard to be consistent offensively, especially with Oregon also losing Abu Kigab to a transfer announced earlier this week. Perhaps we’ll see Will Richardson take on more of a role or Ehab Amin. Either way, they need help quickly.