Iowa women's basketball updates Hannah Stuelke injury status
· Yahoo Sports
Iowa women's basketball (24-5, 15-3 Big Ten) is readying for the Big Ten Tournament where the ninth-ranked Hawkeyes will look to reclaim the conference crown in Indy.
It seems like Iowa might need to navigate this conference tournament minus one of its top stars, though. Senior forward Hannah Stuelke, who was just honored to the All-Big Ten Second Team, was injured during the Hawkeyes' Thursday, Feb. 26 win over Illinois.
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Stuelke left the game and then returned. However, her right-elbow injury sidelined her from Iowa's regular-season finale at Wisconsin.
Iowa head women's basketball coach Jan Jensen was asked for an update on the star forward on Wednesday.
"Well, it's not as good as I'd like. We don't practice today, but, if you saw the injury, it was pretty banged up. With adrenaline—it's an amazing thing about adrenaline—but, after that settled, the swelling and the pain of it. That's definitely a concern moving forward," Jensen said.
Jensen was asked if it was mainly a pain tolerance concern or if Stuelke is being held out as a precautionary measure.
"It's all of it. It's a pretty severe elbow injury, of the torque of it, the swelling the range of motion, the pain, the length of time of probably what really takes an injury like this to feel better, better. She has not practiced. Trying to figure out when to try it.
"I think if she can go, she'll go through with some of that adrenaline. But, it's her strong hand, her dominant arm, so we're just trying to give it as much rest to see what it feels like, but there's a lot more than just the pain tolerance. If it can't move, it can't move. You can do some things with it, so we're just trying to give it every moment," Jensen said.
The Hawkeyes earned the No. 2 seed in the Big Ten Tournament and will play on Friday at 5:30 p.m. CT on the Big Ten Network against No. 7 seed Michigan State, No. 10 seed Illinois or No. 15 seed Wisconsin. Iowa will practice on Thursday before the Big Ten Tournament and Jensen said Stuelke could still play even if she doesn't practice tomorrow.
But, ultimately, it wouldn't be a major surprise if Iowa holds Stuelke out of the Big Ten Tournament altogether and gives her two more weeks worth of rest.
"The positive thing is, we do get to play again later. It's not season-ending. Maybe every day, sometimes there's small increments in the improvement we need to see, sometimes there's a bigger jump. I know she'll want to play, but I think right now, it's everything we're trying to see improve with it.
"I know just being a senior and how much fun a Big Ten Tournament is, I know that if she can play and feel like she can play and be helpful, she'll play. But, right now, we're just not in that mode of practicing even to see if she can do it... If we don't have her tomorrow, that doesn't mean we won't give her a shot on Friday. She's a senior. She can pick up if we're doing this tweak against either Michigan State or Illinois or doing that tweak. It's not her first rodeo there. I'm just trying to figure out mentally the best routes for her, how that feels. Your first action is going to be right away into a game, so we're trying to just get little test things done, but today's fully off."
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This article originally appeared on Hawkeyes Wire: Iowa women's basketball updates Hannah Stuelke injury status