Kevin McNamara of the Providence Journal reported today that Friar senior forward Emmitt Holt is expected to miss an unknown amount of time due to an abdominal injury. He reportedly hasn’t been on campus and has missed almost all of the team’s workouts this September while dealing with the injury. Ed Cooley said the following regarding the injury, “We are monitoring Emmitt’s progress and we expect him to make a full recovery, Emmitt is one of our team’s most consistent and experienced players, but more importantly, he is an outstanding person. We look forward to his return.” It appears that Holt’s availability for the start of the season, which starts Nov 10th against Houston Baptist, could be in jeopardy.
Given the way schedule starts for the Friars and the fact Holt is one of the top players on the team, this injury has come up in an inopportune time. The Friars start their season against Houston Baptist but then three days later will host the University of Minnesota, as apart of the Gavitt Games. Three days after that the Friars will go to New York City for a four team tournament that features Washington, Saint Louis and Virginia Tech. In Holt the Friars will be missing not only a productive player, as he was second on the team in scoring and rebounding with 12.5 ppg and 5.4 rpg respectively, but an emotional leader for the team. Kyron Cartwright and Emmitt Holt are the two guys that most give the Friars their toughness, attitude and a mean streak if you will. Obviously the most important thing is Holt’s health and an abdominal injury doesn’t sound like a lot of fun but this certainly a blow to the team early on. The silver lining in all of this we will get to see what some of the young guys like Khalif Young, Nate Watson and Dejour Dickens can bring to the frontcourt.