Hendrickson Will Not Play This Weekend
The broken hand suffered by Washington State’s Mark Hendrickson in last week’s road win over San Jose State could keep the 6-foot-9 senior sidelined at least another two weeks, according to coach Kevin Eastman.
Eastman announced Tuesday that Hendrickson will miss Thursday night’s Pacific-10 Conference opener against defending national champion UCLA at the Spokane Arena and Saturday’s game against Southern California at Friel Court in Pullman.
Eastman added it is unlikely that his all-conference forward will be ready for next week’s road trip to Oregon and Oregon State.
“And after that, who knows?” Eastman said. “He probably won’t be ready until Washington (Jan. 21 in Seattle) at the earliest.”
That means Hendrickson, the Cougars’ leading rebounder and second-leading scorer, could miss WSU’s first four Pac-10 games.
In addition, Eastman may be without backup point guard Kareem Jackson for Thursday’s 7 p.m. showdown against the Bruins. Jackson, a junior transfer from Sacramento City College, is in Oakland, Calif., to attend his grandmother’s Thursday morning funeral.
“We’re not sure we can get him back in time for the game,” Eastman said of Jackson, who flew home following last Friday’s 88-81 win at California-Irvine. “Obviously, he won’t be involved in any of the preparation for UCLA, but we could sure use him to spell Donminic (Ellison) for those five, seven or 10 minutes he can give us.”
Still, the big loss is Hendrickson, who was averaging 17 points and a Pac-10-leading 9.9 rebounds per game before breaking the fifth metacarpal just above his left wrist in the closing minutes of the 90-74 rout of San Jose.
“Quite frankly, we haven’t had very good practices the past few days,” Eastman admitted. “Whether that’s a direct result of Mark not being there, I don’t know. It might be us (coaches), as a staff, just trying to make sure we do everything perfect, because no mistakes are allowed now.
“Our team has to understand that when you have an NBA player taken out of your lineup, it’s a significant loss. You can’t be cocky about it and then all of a sudden think, ‘It’s OK, we can win anyway.’ Right now, we have to be the scrappiest, most hustling team in the Pac-10.”
Eastman, as he did against UC Irvine, will start 6-6 sophomore Carlos Daniel at Hendrickson’s spot. And he said he plans to use Bill Coby, a 6-8, 238-pound freshman, and junior college transfer Cameron Johnson to spell Daniel and junior Tavares Mack, his other front-line starter.
“Without Mark, we don’t get as many easy baskets inside and we don’t get as many key rebounds,” Eastman said. “One of our other big guys just has to step it up to a level they haven’t been to, yet.
“If we play really, really well, then hopefully, the game is close at the end, and then who knows what might happen.”
Hendrickson attended practice Tuesday with his hand in a brace, but did little more than try to dribble a basketball.
“He can’t even really run yet, because it hurts the hand,” Eastman explained. “And we really don’t want to do anything that will put (the hand) in a situation where it might be displaced.”
Hendrickson had started 43 consecutive games prior to the injury.
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