By Mark Simon
D3hoops.com
Wooster senior forward Bryan Nelson has made up his mind that he is going to play in the Final Four even if he has to take his crutches onto the basketball court with him. This moment has been too long in the making to let a severely sprained ankle prevent him from competing.
Nelson, the North Coast Athletic Conference player of the year got hurt scoring the last of his 27 points in the Scots' 68-64 win in the sectional final last Saturday against Ramapo. While driving to the basket after catching a lob pass, Nelson (44), who was named sectional MVP fell over a Ramapo player trying to get in position to take the charge. All Nelson’s weight shifted and he landed square on his right ankle. The swelling began immediately and didn’t begin to subside until Monday. Normally, an injury like this would require seven to 10 days of rest.
Forgive Nelson if he’s going to do everything to try to accelerate the process just a little bit. That’s why he visited the school trainer five times on Monday.
“I sure could have done without this,” Nelson said, his spirits brightened a bit on Monday when he realized the healing process was ever so slowly beginning. “At this moment, I look at it like I’m playing no matter what. You only get the chance to be in something like this once in your life and you’ve got to take advantage of it.”
Nelson has heard the stories of players like Willis Reed limping onto the court to play with a torn hamstring, serving as the New York Knicks inspirational leader in Game 7 of the 1970 NBA Finals against the Los Angeles Lakers. His dad Greg remembers that, as well as his own experience. As coincidence would have it, Greg Nelson, a former power forward at Jacksonville University, sprained his ankle just prior to the 1971 NCAA Tournament, but played through it.
The ankle is such a critical component to Bryan Nelson’s game. At 6-4, he plays bigger than his size and guards opposing teams' tallest players. His movements, the ones that led to him averaging better than 20 points per game, require a lot of pivoting and turning, which may turn in to limping and shuffling. Or maybe it won’t.
“You have so much adrenaline pumping in a situation like that,” said Greg Nelson, now a healthcare administrator. “That’s the basketball gods’ natural healing potion. He’s a tough kid. He’ll be able to get past this.”
Nelson had a stress fracture in his leg just prior to Christmas break, but with the time off missed only two games and almost all of a third — a telling 70-52 win at Elmhurst in the Blue Jay Classic. The sign that this season was going to be different from other ones might have come in that victory. The Scots put four players in double figures and shot 14-for-32 from 3-point range. They aren’t 29-2 just because of one player’s achievements.
Five-foot-10 shooting guard Rodney Mitchell has twice hit shots in the final 30 seconds to win games, including a jumper in the lane with three seconds remaining to beat John Carroll in the second round of the NCAA Tournament, 77-75. Senior Matt Smith is one of the top 3-point shooters in the country, hitting at 47%. Point guard Kyle Witucky has stepped into a starting spot as a freshman. Big men Blake Mealer and Matt Schlingman have made big strides in improving this season in the low post. Shooting guard Ryan Snyder has been a super-sub. Put everything together and you learn the following — the Scots wouldn’t be in the Final Four without Nelson, but he wouldn’t have gotten this far without them either.
“My teammates have been tremendous all year,” said Nelson. “We wouldn’t be here without us being a collective unit. It has always been about the team here, not about the individual.”
Unselfishness is the basis of head coach Steve Moore’s system, and considering his record as the Scots coach is 358-91, it’s fair to say that his teaching his been effective. The one thing that was missing from that record was a Final Four appearance. Naysayers pointed to a 6-15 record in NCAA play as evidence that the team wilted in the postseason. Moore, left, points out that his squads lost at national runner-up Hampden Sydney in the 1999 tournament and 2000 champ Calvin the following season.
“We’ve had other teams that were capable of going to the Final Four, but we lost some very close games,” Moore said. “This was a team that we felt was capable, but we knew we would have to get some very close wins over some very good teams. We’ve learned in other years that you need everything to go your way. This year, it happened.”