Michigan State forward Malik Hall not playing today, may be out 'for a long while'
East Lansing, Mich. – Michigan State senior forward Malik Hall is not playing today against Purdue and is going to be out for an extended period of time, Spartan head coach Tom Izzo said prior to the game, Monday.
Hall went down with an ankle injury with 7:33 left in the second half of Friday’s loss at Illinois. Hall also injured the ankle late in the first half of Michigan State’s victory over Michigan on Jan. 7.
“It looks like he is going to be out for a while, maybe a long while,” Izzo said during the pre-game radio show on Monday. “We’ll know more tonight or tomorrow. The specialists are looking at the c-scans and all the things that they do now. But the preliminary stuff did not look great. Just one of those bad breaks and we’ll see what happens.”
Hall had previously missed eight games with a stress reaction injury in the same foot. The ankle injury is not believed to be related to the stress reaction.
“It takes some options away that we had,” Izzo said of Hall’s absence. “We were just starting to play small with Malik and Joey (Hauser) together once in awhile together. We were moving Malik from the three, four to the five, moving him all over.
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“Malik has a calmness on the floor. When he is on the floor there is just a settling effect. That is not going to be there. That’s a veteran, that’s a good player that has really come a long way, yet we have to move on and see what we can do.”
With Hall unavailable, sophomore Pierre Brooks is a player whose minutes will increase again.
“We have to give him a few more minutes and he has to give us something,” Izzo said. “I’m hoping inside we can keep rotating our three bigs. And (walk-on transfer from Western Michigan) Jason Whitens might play a little bit more. We are going to need an energy guy. He’s the energy guy. We’ll see what happens, but we’re not feeling sorry for us. The good news is we have played most of the year without Malik. Even when he was back, he wasn’t back the way Malik was back, but you did see some of the impact that he has had.”
The Big Ten has only two teams ranked in the Top 25, including No. 3-ranked Purdue. Michigan State plays the other ranked team, Rutgers, on Thursday.
Michigan State has played four games in 10 days.
“The schedule has been kind of ridiculous and the Big Ten has got to do something about it and I say that win or lose today,” Izzo said. “It’s been tough.”
