Frazier unlikely for Thursday game vs Ole Miss
Monday, February 9, 2015 | Men's Basketball, Football, Chris Harry
GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- The ankle injury suffered by Michael Frazier II likely will keep the junior shooting guard out of the lineup Thursday when Florida (12-11, 5-5) takes on Ole Miss (16-7, 7-3) at the O'Connell Center.
Frazier suffered what Coach Billy Donovan called a high-ankle sprain in the first half of Saturday night's home loss to No. 1 and unbeaten Kentucky. Though Frazier tried to play through the pain, Donovan thought his leading scorer was laboring too much and put him on the bench for good with about 12 minutes left in the game.
The plan for the week, Donovan said Monday, was to keep Frazier in a boot, maintain treatment on the injury and monitor the swelling, adding though that Frazier was “probably definitely out” for the game the next game.
“It's really hard with these things because there is not a lot of swelling in a high-ankle sprain,” Donovan said. “How severe or how bad it is, we are really not quite sure yet, other than to see when we met with the trainer and doctor that it was really tender.”
Minus Frazier, who's averaging 13.2 points per game and hitting nearly 45 percent of his 3-points shots in Southeastern Conference play, the Gators will turn to a combination of guard Chris Chiozza and forward Devin Robinson, both freshmen, to pick up Frazier's minutes; maybe junior Alex Murphy, also. UF will have to get more scoring from junior guard Eli Carter, who is at just 28 percent from the 3-point line in league play.
It was less than three weeks ago that Frazier had his best game of the season in a 72-71 loss at Ole Miss, where he went 7-for-11 from the floor, bombed six of eight 3-point shots and hit all seven of his free throws to finish with 27 points, the second-highest point total of his UF career.
