More than a month after Virginia Tech abruptly ended Clemson’s basketball season with that buzzer-beater in the second round of the ACC tournament, it’s still a hard memory for Brad Brownell to shake. But the Tigers’ coach isn’t sure how much longer his team would’ve lasted in Brooklyn with PJ Hall’s injury gradually getting worse.
“I really don’t think he would’ve played (the next game) because his foot was really bothering him,” Brownell said Wednesday.
Hall, who averaged a team-best 15.5 points despite dealing with painful flareups throughout the season, finally got an official diagnosis. After months of not knowing exactly what he was dealing with, the Tigers’ sophomore big said doctors eventually discovered a fracture in his fourth metatarsal of his left foot.
“It was about halfway or three-quarters through,” Hall said, referencing the depth of the fracture in the bone.
Hall underwent surgery last month during Clemson’s spring break, which he said consisted of inserting a plate and some screws to help stabilize the bone. Nearly three weeks removed from the operation, Hall is still in a protective boot and used a scooter Wednesday to get around the bowels of Littlejohn Coliseum, but he said the surgery went well.
“They went it in there, fixed it all up and said it looks perfect,” Hall said. “I’m really confident in how I’m feeling.”
Hall said full recovery from that kind of surgery will take three months, give or take. Once his incision fully heals, he said, he will start running in the pool. Then, at roughly eight weeks removed from surgery, he’ll progress to a specialized exercise that lets him run at a lower percentage of his body weight. Hall said he expects to be back on the court at some point this offseason.
Hall had two major flareups during the season: one before Christmas against Drake and another in a Feb. 19 game at Louisville. The latter, which happened less than two minutes into the Tigers’ loss to the Cardinals and forced him to miss the next three games, was when Hall said he knew he was dealing with something more than simply a stress reaction.
But Hall said doctors told him he couldn’t make the injury any worse by playing on it. At that point, it was a matter of pain tolerance for the 6-foot-10, 240-pounder.
“And if they tell me that, I’m going to suck it up and just go out there and play because I know that whoever it is – and I’m confident in everybody – but obviously I’d like to be out there,” Hall said. “So that was really my only thought. Whenever it was game time, it was really hard to turn it down.”
Hall returned to the lineup in Clemson’s regular-season finale against Virginia Tech and averaged 15.3 points and 6.3 boards in the Tigers’ last three games. He was their leading scorer in both conference tournament games.
It’s an injury that Hall has been dealing with since his prep days at Spartanburg’s Dorman High, but he’s hopeful that will no longer be the case once he’s fully recovered.
“(Doctors) said it’s more common than you think and that I should never have another problem with it,” Hall said.
Clemson Variety & Frame is doing their part to help bring you some classic new barware and help one of the local businesses that helps make Clemson special.
Order your Nick’s barware and do your part to help. #SaveNicks
