Fitzgerald's injuryCoach Tom Crean said following his post-game news conference that senior forward Dan Fitzgerald was held out of the UWM game because of a sprained left wrist he suffered earlier in the week in practice.
"We're just treating it daily," Crean said. "It happened in practice. He fell when we were scrimmaging the other day, just in the course of the action."
Early indications are the injury isn't anything that should keep Fitzgerald out long-term.
"We're hopeful it's not," said Crean. "I'm glad we have some time off now, to give it a chance to heal."
Crean also said he didn't have a handle on whether Fitzgerald would be ready to go a week from Saturday, when MU travels to Madison to take on Wisconsin.
"Not yet," he said. "We've done all the X-rays and MRIs. It's just going to take a little time."
Although Fitzgerald's injury wound up not having an effect on the outcome of the game, Crean said it did alter his game-planning a bit. One beneficiary of that was freshman guard Scott Christopherson, who returned after a roughly three-week absence due to knee surgery.
"What we tried to do is because we knew Scott was going to be available was to give him some time at the 4," said Crean. "But nobody is going to replace Lazar (Hayward) and Dan taking the ball out of bounds."
As far as Christopherson's return against UWM - he had two points and three rebounds in seven minutes - Crean appeared pleased, especially considering that there had been talk of possibly redshirting the La Crosse Aquinas product had his rehabiltation not gone smoothly.
"Rusty, like he hadn't played," he said when asked how Christopherson looked. "Little slow to react, little slow to get a rebound. But I thought when he went back in during the second half he did a nice job."
And as far as the addition of freshman guard Robert Frozena as a walk-on Friday, Crean said he had a message for the Menasha St. Mary's product before giving him a uniform.
"I told him, 'You're on a 10-day contract," Crean quipped.
http://blogs.jsonline.com/muhoops/archive/2007/11/30/fitzgerald-s-injury.aspx