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Helmigk tears ACL, out for season

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The Wisconsin basketball team’s newest overseas addition, Andreas Helmigk, is out for the season with a knee injury.

Helmigk tore his ACL during practice last Thursday, and will have season-ending surgery in the coming weeks.

Head coach Bo Ryan announced the severity of the injury to Helmigk, who hails from Klagenfurt, Austria, on Monday. Helmigk will be eligible for a medical redshirt and will most likely not lose a year of eligibility.

Ryan tried to maintain a positive outlook concerning the injured forward.

“Hopefully we can turn a negative into a positive,” Ryan said. “He’ll be a year older when he’s a senior, hopefully he can do some things with his upper body during rehabilitation and come back stronger and learn some things while he’s watching.”

The loss of the 6-foot-9 Helmigk, who figured to be an integral part of the Badgers’ front court rotation, is a major blow to a young Wisconsin team. The graduation of five key seniors from last year’s squad had already left Ryan with a lack of manpower, a deficiency compounded by the injury to Helmigk.

“A four-man rotation for the [center and power forward] spots just went to a three-man rotation,” Ryan said, “and I don’t think we want to get down to two. When you don’t have that many guys with size, and one of them goes down, that makes it tough.”

Helmigk’s injury is especially devastating because of the progress the young Austrian was making during the preseason this year.

“He was improving. Anytime he was on the floor and there was a rebound, you always saw one hand sticking above everybody else’s, and it was Andreas’,” Ryan said. “He’s very long. What he gave us was some action around the basket. His post moves were improving. He’s attentive. He wants to learn. The practice before [the injury], the coaching staff agreed that it was his best practice.”

The injury to Helmigk is the second major medical loss for the Badgers this season. Before the season began, freshman guard Latrell Fleming, who was expected to see considerable chunks of floor time, was diagnosed with a heart condition known as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and declared unable to compete.

Ryan spoke of the effect that the loss of seniors like Mike Kelley, Andy Kowske and Roy Boone has on a program, and how losing players to injury is different.

“You always hate to have a year where you lose five seniors and have very few guys back,” Ryan said. “In recruiting and in the way we play guys, you try to build so after one year, you’re not devastated, so the program doesn’t take a quick drop due to lack of experienced players.”

“We knew [losing seniors] was going to be a concern coming in, so that’s not that big of a surprise right now. If you came into a program that had a lot of returning players and three or four of your returning players that you were counting on for a lot of minutes are gone, that’s something else. Here we have a situation where with Fleming and Andreas, two very good players, guys that were going to get playing time; they’re not in the mix.”

The loss of Helmigk will hurt the Badgers on more than just game days. His size and ability were helping other Badgers to improve during Ryan’s practice sessions, and Ryan fears that Helmigk’s absence in practice will catch up with the Badgers.

“In practice, in drill work, we go player against player, whether they’re on the white team or the red team,” Ryan said. “Now [the loss of Helmigk] limits us in practice with our repetitions, with guys going against other guys with more experience, and you tend to pay a price for that somewhere down the road.”

Ryan stressed that while the injury to Helmigk is a major setback for the squad, the Badgers are certainly not the only team that has to deal with key injuries.

“It’s unfortunate news, it’s injury news, it’s what every program goes through,” Ryan said. “Sometimes it happens to people right in the middle of the year. Sometimes it happens during the end of the year, going into tournament play. We’re hoping these things will happen now, not later.”

Despite the injury to Helmigk, Ryan insists that his expectations for his young team have not changed.

“I still expect the same things,” Ryan said. “I expect them to come to practice today and work as hard as they can. I expect them to compete on every possession. I really like the way they play together, the way they look for one another.”

Ryan expressed his concern for the psyche of his foreign big man but reiterated that while Helmigk’s injury certainly hurts this year’s team, it’s not the end of the line for the Austrian.

“Mentally, he’s down,” Ryan said. “It’s probably tougher for someone from a long distance away when something like that happens. Hopefully he’s going to turn this into a positive down the road, and we’re going to work with him to do that.”