Caleb Grill didn’t make too big of a deal of his wrist. He drew a foul while rising to the rim during Mizzou’s game against Wichita State on Dec. 3 and took a hard fall to the hardwood. He came out of the game briefly to get inspected by the Tigers’ trainers, subbing out at the 6:52 mark of the second half, checked back in at the 4:19 mark and drilled a 3-pointer less than a minute later.
There was optimism that Grill wouldn’t have to miss any time, with Grill saying he felt “fine” after the win. But 90 minutes before the team’s game at Kansas on Dec. 9, Missouri announced that the graduate senior guard would miss the next five to seven weeks after needing surgery to treat his injury.
“I said, ‘Caleb, you made a shot after your injury. Are you sure you’re hurt?” head coach Dennis Gates joked during the opening segment of Tiger Talk on Mizzou Radio on Wednesday.
The 6-foot-3 guard’s absence comes at a suboptimal time. Grill’s recovery timetable has him set to return sometime in mid-to-late January, meaning he’ll be sidelined for the Tigers’ toughest stretch of their non-conference slate, with games against Kansas, Seton Hall and Illinois in succession, and likely the first few games of SEC play.
Grill was just starting to play some of his best basketball of the season, too — he’d been a consistent contributor defensively and rebounding-wise all year and likely would've helped keep the Jayhawks from scoring 17 second-chance points. He’d also started to find a rhythm on offense in his last three outings, scoring 10.7 points per game while shooting 44.0% from the field and 38.9% from the 3-point line.
“We can't wait to get Caleb Grill back. He's involved in practice, his personality is still a part of our team, he's here,” Gates said at the team’s press conference on Friday. “And also, we're excited with what he gives our guys. He was still coaching from the sidelines in our last game and he'll continue to do the same. And we wish him a speedy recovery.”
The Iowa State transfer was averaging 22 minutes for MU, which now have to be redispersed to other members of the roster — Tamar Bates, Curt Lewis, Trent Pierce, Aidan Shaw and Connor Vanover all played more minutes against Kansas than they’ve averaged on the year.
Shaw and Gates agreed that it’s going to take a better effort from everyone in the rotation to make up for what they’ve lost in Grill.
“Caleb Grill, he's a very physical — we call it a 'spark,'” Shaw said. “He's a spark for sure, brings a lot of energy to the game, which, he's still giving us the energy that he can, you know, coaching from the sidelines and all that. So I feel like just everybody needs to step up and bring that same energy. And I mean, we'll hold each other accountable for that, for sure.”
“The only adjustment that we have to make is next man up,” Gates said. “Our team was built on depth. We have depth, we have guys that can play. I want to challenge Curt Lewis, I want to challenge Jesus (Carralero Martin), I want to challenge different guys to step up and play and that's what it's about. I want to challenge Tamar Bates to give us more, I want Sean East, Nick Honor to give us more. But we have a multitude of guys and we have depth that allows us the opportunity to get through what every team goes through: the knick-knacks of college basketball, the physical part of it and the injuries that come up.”
The Tigers had just two players, East and Honor, who scored double-digit points at Kansas and just one, Carter, who had more than four rebounds. And while they only lost by nine to the No. 2 team in the country, Gates knows they’ll need more to get by without Grill.
Mizzou (7-3) will get the opportunity when it heads back out away from home this weekend, taking on Seton Hall (6-4) at the T-Mobile Center in Kansas City, Mo., at 4 p.m.
“I don't want guys to be him or feel that they need to be him. I want our guys to be themselves but understand the things that need to be filled in the gap,” Gates said. “He's physical, he pursues the basketball, loose ball or rebound. Those are areas that I think can help any team in the country when you can get extra possessions, knock down shots and different things like that. So Noah Carter needs to knock down more shots and our guard play just needs to continue to take care of the basketball. Defensively, Caleb Grill was probably one of our highest-graded defenders. So that's another guy that can defend at a high level that I truly believe, by committee, we'll have to continue to get better at.”
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