Dez Wells Breaks The Wrist On His Shooting Hand, Out For A Month

ESPN – Maryland senior forward Dez Wells will be sidelined for at least four weeks because of a broken bone in his right wrist. The injury occurred in Maryland’s 72-63 victory over No. 13 Iowa State on Tuesday. Wells had surgery Friday morning in Baltimore, the team announced. Said coach Mark Turgeon: “We will certainly miss our team leader. … I am extremely disappointed for Dez.”

On the surface, this feels disastrous. Any supporter of Maryland athletics in recent years will tell you that whenever things start to go well in College Park, the basketball or football gods have to spit in our faces and bring it all crumbling down. In a lot of ways, this injury just feels like more of the same. But I’m here to tell you it’s not. This is different. I’m sure of it. 5 games may be a small sample size, but everything we’ve seen so far leads me to believe that this freshman class has the ability to keep their composure and overcome this loss in the short term. Really, it might even be a good thing for the Melo Trimbles and Jared Nickens and the development of the rest of those young guys. They get to play more high pressure minutes that will pay dividends down the road. And like I said, they handled tough minutes against 2 tournament teams admirably this week.

I can’t honestly say I expected them to come out of the CBE Classic undefeated. That was a pleasant surprise. It gave me hope that we’d be able to upset a ranked UVA team next week at Com…Xfinity Center and that’s where the Dez Wells loss will hurt. He’s played those guys numerous times. He matches up well against that backstabber Justin Anderson. It’ll be an uphill task to get a big resume win against them and OK State in Stillwater. But if the kids can rally and steal one of those 2 games (assuming they beat scrubs at home), they’ll go into conference play with a shot to build their best tournament resume in years. Dez will be back for Big Ten play and that’s what’s most important. So yeah, it sucks to see your leader go down. Especially when he was the one guy who put his heart and soul into every game last year when nearly everyone else quit. He deserves better, but he’ll be back. Not all is lost. The Terps are still going places.