The Wisconsin Badgers had a huge 78-45 win over the Maryland Terrapins to cap off their season at the Kohl Center on Wednesday, but the blowout came with some bad news.
Senior forward Nolan Winter exited the game in the second half with an ankle injury after falling hard on a putback layup off a rebound. Winter was down on the court being tended to by trainers for several minutes before being helped by teammates to the locker room.
The injury was scary because Winter has been dealing with ankle issues
in recent games, but head coach Greg Gard revealed this injury was different than the star’s previous ones.
“We’ll know more tomorrow,“ Gard said about Winter. ”Early indications, hopefully we avoided the worst. We’ll see where everything with the testing and stuff goes tomorrow and the evaluation goes tomorrow. We will know more in 24 hours or so.
“But obviously, he hasn’t rolled that ankle. It’s the other one that’s been [hurt before]. Always when you do that the first time, there is always an extra amount of pain. We’ll see. He was in decent spirits in the locker room and stuff. So, he’s already doing treatment, and we’ll see what we learn tomorrow, and then have a path forward to getting him healed up.”
On Thursday, analyst Jon Rothstein reported that Winter was ‘day-to-day’ with his injury, per a UW spokesperson, similar to what Gard said about the Badgers avoiding the worst.
It doesn’t seem likely that Winter will suit up against the Purdue Boilermakers on Saturday, and it would also make sense to have him sit out most, if not all, of the Big Ten Tournament to give him a better chance to heal.
The ultimate hope is that Winter can return for the NCAA Tournament, where the Badgers will look to make a run. If he’s unable to go, then that would be a serious blow for Wisconsin.
With Winter out, expect Austin Rapp and Will Garlock to see an uptick in minutes. Rapp could slide into the starting lineup once again, moving Aleksas Bieliauskas to the five and bumping Garlock up to the top big off the bench. Wisconsin also could look to run more small-ball out of necessity.
Wisconsin’s depth already took a hit when Jack Janicki suffered a hand injury that could sideline him for the rest of the season. Now with Winter hurt, the Badgers may have to go even deeper into their bench.
