by cu blujs » Thu Jan 18, 2018 4:34 pm
As someone posted on bluejay underground, its not even just a two year run, CU has had a season ending injury to a starter or sixth man in 5 of the last 6 years. (Jones 2013 heart, Z 2014 shoulder, Z 2015 knee, Mo 2017 ACL, Krampelj 2018 ACL.) When you don't have great depth, those losses really hurt - as all saw last year and will probably become evident this year. What's more, we have had a long run of experiencing this. Major injuries also took out 6th man/starter Grant Gibbs for a large part of 2014 (meniscus). Going back further, we lost go-to point/shooting guard Funk (2006 torn labrum) for the last half of a season, and 3 year starting point guard Dotzler (2006 partially torn PCL) for a major part of the season - he tried to play on it, but it never got better before shutting it down and having surgery. Going back even further, we lost our 4 year starting point guard Tyler McKinney back in the 20003-04 season, I believe, after 10 games due to an corneal-eating amoeba he contracted while the team was on a summer basketball tour of Canada (stored his contacts in tap water overnight). Ended up needing two corneal transplant that following spring. We were 54-9 in games he started from freshman through that point in his junior year. We were 10-0 that season when sight problems forced him out of the lineup and 10-9 the rest of the season without him. I doubt any program has lost a key contributor in almost half of their seasons this millennium.