MORGANTOWN, W. Va. — Isaiah Cottrell will be forced to sit out the rest of the season, after an MRI on Wednesday showed the West Virginia forward had sustained a torn Achilles tendon in his left leg.
The Achilles tendon is a fibrous cord that connects the muscles in the back of your calf to your heel bone.
The 6-foot-10 Cottrell injured the leg during the first half of the No. 9 Mountaineers’ 73-51 victory against Northeastern on Tuesday.
“Everyone associated with Mountaineer Basketball is saddened by the news that we received on Isaiah,” WVU head coach Bob Huggins said. “Isaiah is a great teammate, a wonderful kid and a hard worker, who will do everything asked of him to get back to 100 percent and back on the court.”
The injury came while Cottrell was playing defense and sliding to his left. Replays showed he did not come into contact with anyone and his leg may have buckled after planting his left foot on the court.
He was helped off the court and back to the locker room. Cottrell exited the Coliseum on Tuesday on crutches.
“Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers,” Cottrell tweeted. “I’ll be back soon.”
Until then, Huggins and the Mountaineers will have to find another option for a back-up power forward.
Huggins’ first option could be to lean even more on senior forward Gabe Osabuohien, who has generally been one of the first players off WVU’s bench.
The WVU coach also said that freshman Jalen Bridges, who has been the back-up to Emmitt Matthews Jr. at small forward, could now see some time playing power forward.
Bridges, a Fairmont native, redshirted last season, but made an impression on Huggins during practices.
Huggins often said last season that Bridges would have been in WVU’s playing rotation had he not been redshirting.
But, the 6-7 Bridges has only played limited minutes this season. He has appeared in nine of WVU’s 10 games, averaging just under seven minutes of playing time per game.
“I was waiting for J.B. to kind of break out of it this year,” Huggins said. “At the end of last year, he was playing as well as anybody. He was offensive rebounding the ball really well. He was rebounding defensively and he was really making shots.
“I thought coming in that if he carried the same thing in that he ended with a year ago, he’d be hard to keep out of the lineup, and I think he will. He’s a great kid. He wants to do the right thing. Maybe sometimes you want to do the right thing too much, you maybe put a little more pressure on yourself than what you need to.”
As for Cottrell, the forward from Las Vegas was a four-star recruit and the highest-ranked prospect the Mountaineers signed this season.
He averaged 1.6 points and 1.4 rebounds in limited action during his first 10 games.
Because the NCAA allowed an extra year of eligibility to winter-sport athletes this season over COVID-19 restrictions, Cottrell would still be considered a freshman next season upon his return and would still have four years of eligibility remaining.
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