Houston guard Ramon Walker suffers torn meniscus, out for season

It was a bittersweet press conference for Houston coach Kelvin Sampson on Saturday, who reveled in the big win at Baylor while also sharing some sour injury news.

While at the podium, Sampson addressed the absence of Cougar guard Ramon Walker, who was ruled out of the Baylor game due to an injury suffered in practice. Well, after the victory, Sampson shared that Walker suffered a torn meniscus and will miss the remainder of the 2023-24 season.

Here was that news as reported to Twitter by University of Houston beat writer Joseph Duarte: “Houston guard Ramon Walker tore lateral meniscus and is out for the season, per coach Kelvin Sampson.”

Tough, tough news for Houston, who is now down to eight non-redshirt scholarship players after the loss of Walker on top of the loss of sophomore wing Terrance Arceneaux back in December.

Walker was certainly the Cougars’ ninth man out of nine before going down as he averaged less than two points per game and was the only rotation player playing under 10 minutes a game. But still, his 9+ minutes per game was nice filler for the inevitable rest of guys like Jamal Shead, LJ Cryer and Emanuel Sharp.

Those three ought to still take the lion’s share of the perimeter minutes, but the depth is pretty bare bones. Walker and Arceneaux were often deployed at the three spot and provided enough size and athleticism, but now, Sampson will likely just have to stick with his guards there with Mylik Wilson seeing a sudden jump in minutes as the senior guard is now the only reserve at his position.

There’s also Damian Dunn, who can play the two, three or four, and, like Wilson, will likely get a bump in minutes now that he’s really the only true small forward on the roster, at least when you look at his combination of length and guard skills.

So down low, that leaves just J’Wan Roberts and J’Vier Francis, the starters at the forward spots, while the freshman Joseph Tugler comes off the bench. Dunn has spotted some minutes at the four and that’ll likely continue since UH really only has three big men.

This is now an eight-man roster, unless Sampson opts to burn one of his redshirted guys, which is possible given the injury situation, but less likely with the team so deep into its season already. So Houston is desperately needing to keep the current group healthy, because they still do have just enough bodies to maintain status as a title contender.

But if one more guy goes down, especially a starter, then Houston could be toast when it comes to the national title discussion. And that is unfortunate.