Norman — There isn’t much Willie Warren can do with a basketball right now.
“Can’t really do much on the court when you’re wearing a (medical) boot,” he said Monday.
The Oklahoma guard is in basketball limbo. The arthroscopic surgery performed on his right ankle last week knocked him out for the season. He hasn’t been in uniform since OU’s Feb. 17 game against Colorado. He won’t be in Kansas City, Mo., when the Sooners face Oklahoma State at 6 p.m. Wednesday in the first round of the Big 12 tournament.
Whether or not he ever puts on a Sooner uniform again is the question everyone wants answered. Warren admits he doesn’t have one.
“I haven’t been looking at that,” he said. “I’ve just been rehabbing my ankle and trying not to be a distraction to my team.”
Who would have thought that would be the scenario five months ago?
When the season began, Warren was a national player of the year candidate and projected NBA draft lottery pick. But he freely admits what transpired over this season has changed things.
OU (13-17) struggled to its worst record in a 29 years and Warren didn’t meet the lofty expectations pinned on him.
“A lot people say the pressure doesn’t get to them. I don’t think the pressure got to me, but when you’re losing it’s easy to say that,” Warren said. “I didn’t shoot the ball very well, but my numbers were pretty good. I could have done a lot more things to help my team out.”
Warren averaged 16.3 points this season, but he only shot 43.8 percent from the field and 30.9 percent from 3-point range. Both percentages were regressions from his freshman year.
“He didn’t get off to a good start as far as shooting the basketball,” OU coach Jeff Capel said Monday. “He didn’t play as well as we know he’s capable of playing before Christmas. Then after Christmas, he only played in four conference games. I thought in the first two he struggled. I thought the last two he really started to come on. And then he got hurt and was never the same.”
Warren entered the season believing this would be his final season at OU. He was projected as a first-round pick in the 2009 NBA draft, but turned it down, believing he could elevate his stock with another college season.
The injury and OU’s losing season, however, have created serious questions.
Warren said he hasn’t paid attention to where his draft stock currently sits. The question is moot until Warren’s ankle injury is healed. Doctors say that will be at least four weeks from now.
How well the injury heals will be the biggest factor. He must declare by April 25.
“I’ve just been focusing on getting my ankle back to full strength,” Warren said. “If it isn’t full strength, I don’t really have a choice to make; it’s going to be coming back to Oklahoma. In order to have options, I have to go to all my rehab sessions and do everything right to have those kinds of choices.”
Capel believes Warren will still have options even though the guard didn’t have the kind of season he expected.
“I don’t think a lot of NBA teams anymore draft on necessarily on what you do. I think a lot of it is based on potential, and what they think a guy can become. The draft is different than it used to be,” Capel said. “You had to have a body of work in college, but that’s not necessarily the case anymore.”
Still, Warren isn’t sure his immediate future is in the NBA.
“The main thing in my mind is why not come back next year and prove everybody wrong. What could be worse? Be in the lottery again?” he said. “They had me projected there this year. If I come back, they might have me projected there again. I think it would relieve pressure. I probably wouldn’t come in as national player of the year candidate like I did this year. I think it would relieve a lot of stress and I would be able to just go out there and play basketball.”
John Shinn 366-3536 jshinn@normantranscript.com
