It was announced Friday morning that Thiero would be designated as available for Saturday’s matchup against No. 2 seed St. John’s if he could dominate practice today.
This follows freshman guard Boogie Fland’s triumphant comeback in the victory over the Jayhawks, where he played almost twice as many minutes as anticipated despite sustaining many hard fouls that would have caused his surgically repaired hand to re-injure.
Thiero was last seen by Arkansas fans during a victory against Missouri at home. In just over 25 minutes, he had 11 points and five rebounds before suffering a leg injury late in the game.
In addition to seeing everyone have fantastic games against Kansas, Arkansas coach John Calipari’s post-game remarks about the Hogs’ zone problems that nearly cost them the game might have served as some motivation for his possible comeback.
“I thought I prepared us for zone, but I did a poor job, but we learnt about ourselves because in the past with Adou Thiero we’d just get the ball in the middle,” Calipari stated. Since they aren’t Adou, we tried to do the same with other players. The children persisted even though we had to go to another event. made free throws and shots.
Even if the Tweet says that Thiero’s playing line is to just practise on Friday, it’s more likely that he won’t be able to practise effectively. It’s unlikely that he will play if he tries and fails to complete.
But saying “if he practices” just added another level of preparation to what St. John’s coach Rick Pitino will have to put his staff and players through at the last minute, when every second of preparation is so important to a team’s success, at a time of year when gamesmanship can be worth a few points here and there.
Pitino and Arkansas supporters will likely have to wait until just before 1:40 p.m. on Saturday to find out for sure which way this one is going to go, while Calipari will likely know for sure whether he will have his star forward available rather soon. Handling it any other way would not be advantageous.
