Kansas freshman center Joel Embiid, projected by many to be the No. 1 pick in the NBA Draft this summer, will not play this week at the Big 12 Conference championship tournament but it’s safe to say he will be the most scrutinized college basketball player in the nation in advance of the NCAA tournament.
Ron Wellman, athletic director at Wake Forest and chair of the Division I men’s basketball committee this year, told reporters during a conference call Wednesday that his group will be in constant contact with Kansas this week as it goes through the selection and seeding process for the NCAA tournament. The committee has convened in Indianapolis and will announce the field for the 2014 tournament Sunday.
Kansas, considered a possible No. 1 seed before Embiid injured his back and missed the final two regular season games, will meet Marcu Smart and Oklahoma State in the quarterfinal round of the Big 12 Tournament Thursday night – without Embiid. Wellman said the Jayhawks will be evaluated on more than just the outcome of any games played in Kansas City without the Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year.
Kansas fans would like to see No. 21 back in uniform before the season is over. (KEN DAVIS PHOTO)
“I can assure you, in any situation, whether it regards an injury or an overall evaluation of a team, the committee not only looks at the victory or the one‑loss record, we look at how the team played, who they played, where they played that particular team,” Wellman said. “So it is a very deep evaluation of a team that goes way beyond whether they won or lost that particular game.”
In essence, the committee has to decide whether to penalize a team because it is missing a key player due to injury, or to reward that team for its overall body of work – with and without the player. Kansas brings a 23-8 overall record into the Oklahoma State game and is 2-1 without Embiid this season.
Wellman also said that “it is up to the individual committee member as to how much weight they want to put on that particular injury.”
Kansas coach Bill Self said earlier in the week that it seemed likely Embiid would also miss the first weekend of the NCAA tournament. But Embiid is in the process of rehab process and did some like work during a Kansas shootaround at Kansas City’s Sprint Center Wednesday.
“Where that puts the Jayhawks next week, we haven’t even started those discussions yet,” Wellmaan said. “I can assure that the committee members are well aware of the that injury. We will be following it throughout the week. We will be in contact with Kansas to get various updates.
“So we will be in as good a position as we possibly can be to place Kansas in the right seed line and the right location in following that injury and the impact that injury could have upon Kansas. You need to remember, too, that we have seen Kansas play three times without [Embiid] now. We’ll have the opportunity to see Kansas play a number of times possibly this week in their conference tournament without him.”
Connecticut had a similar situation in 2004 when center Emeka Okafor injured his back late in the season. UConn dropped one line in the seeding process but time helped Okafor’s situtation and he ended up playing. UConn won the national championship. In 2000, Arizona’s Loren Woods didn’t play because of a back injury but the Wildcats were not penalized in the seeding process.
In 2010 Syracuse told the committee that center Arinze Onuaku would likely be available for the second weekend of the 2010 tournament – despite a serious leg injury. That, it turned out, was not true.
“We have to rely upon what the schools tell us,” Wellman said when asked about the Syracuse incident. “We don’t have a CIA operation here where we can go in the backdoor and find out information that they are not giving us. So we do rely upon the school’s truthfulness with us and we believe they do tell us the truth.
“Sometimes it doesn’t pan out the way they predict. But they believe they do their best to give us the very best diagnosis. The diagnosis of an injury can change from day‑to‑day, as well. That could have very well been the case in the situation that you refer to.”
The fact that Embiid participated in the shootaround with the Jayhawks Wednesday caused a brief stir on Twitter. But Self later talked to reporters and you can hear his explanation here.
Self also sat down with the Lawrence Journal World to provide a complete and detailed timeline of Embiid’s injury.
And it turns out Embiid had back problems while playing in high school last season. Read what his former coach told the Journal World.
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