The injuries just keep piling up for Seton Hall.
The Pirates could be without leading scorer Fuquan Edwin for Sunday’s tilt with UConn. Edwin scored 23 of Seton Hall’s 46 points in Monday’s loss at Pitt, but suffered a right ankle injury with 7:38 remaining.
“Fuquan is out right now,” Pirates coach Kevin Willard, whose team is 13-10, 2-8 in the Big East and has dropped four straight, said on Thursday’s Big East conference call.
“As of right now, depending on how he reacts to treatment today, we’ll see how he goes [Friday]. If he can go [Friday] and then we’ll judge it by Saturday. But right now, it doesn’t look good. I don’t really know for sure because he’s had some injuries so far this year that he’s bounced back. But we just gotta see how well he heals.”
A 6-foot-6 junior from Paterson, N.J., Edwin is Seton Hall’s most important player, averaging 16.9 points and 5.9 rebounds per game.
Meantime, junior wing Brian Oliver will need postseason surgery on his ankle.
“Brian’s still game-to-game,” Willard said. “He won’t practice. He’ll be lucky to practice again this year before he has surgery.”
He added: “It’s something with ligaments and a whole bunch of stuff that he’s torn in there. He’s really fighthing through it for us right now. I was really proud of his effort the other night because he was in a boot and 25 minutes before the game he came in and changed. So we’ll just see how he reacts to treatment and how he can go from game-to-game.”
As reported here Wednesday night, Aaron Cosby will return after missing the Pitt game for “family reasons.”
The Pirates are already without forward Patrik Auda (broken foot) for the season and have also dealt with injuries to big men Kevin Johnson, Gene Teague and Aaron Geramipoor.
“I thought that last year we had a record-number of injuries, more so than any other time in my coaching tenure,” Louisville coach Rick Pitino said. “Kevin Willard now has broken our record of last year. I’ve never seen the devastation of injuries.”