The NCAA tournament is set to begin Thursday afternoon, and many people have already filled out their brackets. A popular sleeper pick to make a deep run in the tournament has been the California Golden Bears due to the vast amount of talent that they have on their roster.
Jaylen Brown and Ivan Rabb are the players on Cal that get the most attention because they are guys that are projected to be first-round picks in the upcoming NBA Draft, but the team's most important player might just be senior point guard Tyrone Wallace. Wallace leads the team in scoring and is a huge key to the team turning it around this season, but his status for the NCAA tournament is now up in the air.
Wallace suffered a fractured bone in his non-shooting hand during practice leading up to Cal's first round game on Friday against Hawaii. Cal plans to further evaluate their point guard by putting him through more tests, but his status for their game on Friday and the rest of the tournament is now uncertain at best.
This is the second time that Wallace has fractured a bone in his right hand this year. The first time it happened was back in January, and that injury caused him to miss about a month of action. The severity of this injury is unknown, but it doesn't look good for the senior or his team.
Not having Wallace available for the tournament would be a huge blow to the Bears' chances to make a run in the tournament, as he is not only their leading scorer, but he does everything on the court and is also the leader. Wallace is a 6-foot-6 point guard that creates a lot of matchup problems, and although he doesn't shoot the long ball well (30 percent), he has averaged 15.3 points, 5.3 rebounds and 4.4 assists per game this year.
With Brown and Rabb still available, Cal should be able to make it past Hawaii in the first round (although Hawaii is a good team and some have picked the upset even before Wallace was injured), but the later rounds now become a huge question mark. The Bears face a potential second-round matchup with Maryland and a potential Sweet Sixteen matchup with Kansas, so if Wallace isn't there, it is hard to believe that they can get past those teams.
We will have to wait and see if the point guard will be able to give it a go this weekend, but even if he can, he will likely be hindered. This Cal team, which struggled early in the season, finally hit their stride entering the postseason (won 9 of 11 games), but that could all be undone by an injury in practice leading up to the tournament.
UPDATE: Cal has officially ruled Wallace out for the entire tournament.
