Senior starter D’Andre Bell said he was always taught to have a Plan A, B, C and D.
“Plan A seems to be put on hold,” the 6-foot-6 wing said Wednesday. “Now I’m going to reach for Plan B.”
Tech announced Wednesday that a condition called spinal stenosis will keep Bell from playing this season.
Diving for a loose ball during an Oct. 10 conditioning workout, Bell’s head collided with Zachery Peacock’s leg. Bell felt numbness, then tingling in his extremities.
An examination by Dr. John Heller, a spine surgeon at the Emory Orthopaedics & Spine Center, revealed Bell had an abnormal narrowing, or stenosis, in the cervical portion of his spine.
It’s a condition in which the spinal canal narrows and compresses the spinal cord. Bell needs surgery, whether or not he wants to play basketball again, and plans to have the operation over winter break.
“It’s truly a blessing that we found it,” Bell said. “I’m looking at my situation from all the positive angles, and I’m just going to play the cards that I’ve been dealt.”
Best wishes to D'Andre on a successful surgery and a full and quick recovery.
Santa Clara forward John Bryant is recovering well from a stabbing incident on September 27:
"I'm back to 100 percent right now," Bryant said. "I have a couple of scars, nothing big. It's not bad." During the first weekend of school, Bryant and a few friends left a party and exchanged words with three men. One of the men knocked Bryant to the ground and another came at him from behind and stabbed him. He was knifed twice on the right side of his lower back and once on the left—with three inch-long scars to show for it. He needed 14 stitches to close the wounds. "He was talking and we said, 'We don't want to mess with you' and started walking away," Bryant said. "He's not a good character. You could just tell. Wrong place, wrong time." Bryant considers himself fortunate—and he said he's learned a lesson about not putting himself in situations where bad things could happen. He knows this could have turned out much worse or even been life-threatening. "You reach to your back and there's all that blood and you wonder what's going on. I was a little scared," he said. "I was lucky not having any internal injuries. It just really put things in perspective. The coaches are always talking about being in the right place at the right time." The suspect in the case was arrested for armed robbery soon after the incident: Santa Clara police arrested Jose Domingo Segovia, 18, of Santa Clara on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon in connection with the stabbing of John Bryant, a star center on the men's basketball team. . . . Early Saturday, police received reports that four Santa Clara students had been robbed at knife point in the 500 block of Washington Street, just a few blocks off campus. As officers responded to the scene, they spotted the suspects' vehicle, a 2002 gold Hyundai, and attempted to stop the men. The suspects abandoned the car and tried to escape on foot, according to police Lt. Mike Sellers. Officers set up a perimeter and began receiving calls from neighbors about people hiding in their back yard. Police found two of the men hiding in a yard; they later identified and arrested Segovia as the third suspect in the robbery. Florida State wide receiver Bert Reed has been suspended for Saturday's game - for violating FSU's policy on class attendance (!!!):
After Wednesday's practice, Bowden said: "Bert Reed, to save a lot of speculation, is suspended because of missing classes.
"I'm afraid some people were making too much out of it, making it into something else. It's missing classes."
Reed was disciplined under a more strict athletic department policy put in place at the request of FSU President T.K. Wetherell because of what he views as high absenteeism.
A student-athlete with "three unexcused absences in any course" will be ineligible to play in one game. Four unexcused absences will result in missing 30 percent of that season's competition.
Is FSU truly entering a Brave New World of academic accountability? One can only hope. . .
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