Marissa Janning will sit out the rest of the season after attempting recovery from a broken fibula. Will apply for medical redshirt for 2016-17 season. (Spomer / WBR)
[dropcap]Pain[/dropcap] and limited mobility stemming from the recovery of a broken fibula in her left leg will cost Creighton senior guard Marissa Janning the remainder of the 2015-16 season. Because she will have only played in six games, she plans to submit a request for a medical redshirt from the NCAA that will allow her to return to Creighton and play one more year, the former Big East Player of the Year and her head coach Jim Flanery announced prior to Monday night’s practice at D.J. Sokol Arena.
Janning, a three-time first team all-conference selection (once in the Missouri Valley Conference and twice in the Big East), suffered the injury with a minute remaining in the fourth quarter of Creighton’s 66-60 overtime win over Eastern Washington — the team’s sixth game of the season — in the final contest of the Lone Star Showcase in Austin, Texas. Timetables for her return to game action ranged from as soon as four weeks to as long as eight weeks, optimistically. However, it soon became apparent that the pain and lack of lateral movement was pushing that clock back with each attempt she made to return.
“I think it’s best for everybody,” Flanery said. “Certainly Marissa didn’t want her senior year to look like this would have looked had she returned, and hobbled through the rest of the season. Maybe she would have been 100% at some point, but I think that’s probably iffy.
“From her standpoint, as I’ve said all along, the time frame was difficult, because it wasn’t so short that it was a no-brainer not to redshirt and it wasn’t so long that it was a no-brainer to redshirt — it was kind of right in that grey area. I think that’s a big part of why it’s dragged on so long. I think she’s comfortable with [the decision], and her family is comfortable with it, and we are, so we just kind of move on.”
While she admits the decision provides her some relief, she struggles with the part of it where she has to continue to watch from the sidelines, unable to help a team that currently sits at 10-11 overall, 4-5 in Big East play, and has lost close games to Nebraska, South Dakota State, St. John’s, Seton Hall, Georgetown, and Marquette in her absence.
“I don’t know if I’ll be at peace until once we get back on track, maybe,” Janning said as her teammates warmed up for practice behind her. “Just because sitting on the bench, knowing I could make a difference, or I’d be able to help my teammates. That keeps me from being at peace, because you always want to be out there.
“I don’t really know how to feel, because it’s a relief not having to necessarily think about it anymore, but to a certain extent I feel like I’m letting my teammates down. It was out of my control. I didn’t do anything [bad]. I was playing in a game and I broke my leg. I did what I have been able to do to rehab, and I continue to do that. To a certain extent I feel like I’m letting them down, but they know it’s not in my control. If they knew that I wasn’t experiencing the pain that I am I would be back out there with them. I still try, but it’s to a point where the pain still makes me have to stop.”
Janning will continue rehab and cheer on the team from the sidelines this season (Spomer / WBR)
Watching Janning go through stationary catch and shoot drills over the past couple weeks nothing has appeared out of order other than the air cast supporting her left leg. But when she tries to guard the dribble, chase down a rebound or a loose ball, or make a play off the dribble for herself or one of her teammates, it’s easy for even an untrained eye to see that her mobility is not where it needs to be for her to be ready to return to game action.
“My lateral movement is still really bad, it’s really tough to do,” Janning said. “Even when I get running, I’m so slow, or at least I feel slow. I’m not myself. I’m not able to put a percentage on it, because I don’t really know since I’ve never really been injured I don’t really know percentages, but if you asked me to play in a game there is no way I could. I can’t defend, I can’t jump up aggressively for a rebound. Another worry that they have is putting so much pressure on that right leg and doing something to it from all of the weight I’m shifting onto that side. It still hurts a lot.”
Not all of the limitations Janning is experiencing are physical in nature. Going through an injury like this which for the first time in her life has caused her to be away from the basketball court for a significant period of time has taken a toll on her mentally as well. The more obstacles she runs into physically, the greater the toll it takes on her psyche.
“I think they kind of mesh together in a way, because when you’re not able to do something physically then mentally you question whether you’re really able to do that. You second guess yourself,” the 5-foot-8 guard said. “I’ve been trying to convince myself that I can’t do it right now, but at a certain point I’ll be able to do it — like running. At first running hurt, even the first few steps, but now it doesn’t hurt for a little bit. It still hurts, but when making those strides you can see your progress — even though mine is coming later than it should have been, because they said I should have been running a little naturally at five weeks and it’s been eight and I still can’t really run.
“Having that pain there just gets you mentally. I just get so frustrated, because I can’t do anything. I’ll try a drill with my teammates, and when I get in there I’ll be kind of tentative, because I’m really scared to be honest. I’ll get in there and then realize I can’t do it, because it’s too much cutting or there’s a lot of defensive sliding, and I can’t do it — everyone on the team is taking their turn blowing right by me right now,” she joked. “Just saying, ‘Guys, I can’t do this. I need to sit this out.’ That’s where it comes in mentally, and it’s really frustrating. In my mind it’s me asking my body to let me do it, and questioning why I can’t.”
On top of the struggles during rehab, both Janning and Flanery acknowledged that the almost daily questions surrounding her status and uncertainty about when she would return was starting to become a bit of a distraction as each of the players started to dig in and become more comfortable in their new roles.
“I think the last ten days to two weeks has been to the point where they’re ready to find out,” Flanery said. “When it first happened we just thought we need to figure out a way to do some short term things to get better, and then I think once we got to early January it became more of a distraction. Not that our kids are selfish in thinking about how their roles are going to change if she comes back, but more about how is that all going to work, because we’ve started to play a little bit better, we’ve started to figure some things out, so I think the last two weeks it’s been a little bit of a distraction.
“But I also think in the last week or so — having seen how little progress she has made — I think that even though there wasn’t a final decision, they knew that she probably wasn’t going to come back.”
While a lot of people have been in her ear, offering both encouragement and advice since the injury, Janning always came back to what her brother Matt, now playing professional basketball overseas, as well as her dad, mom, and older sister kept stressing to her about being patient and letting everything develop organically. In the end, they were right.
“They had a huge impact on my decision,” Janning said of her family’s influence since the injury. “They helped a lot, because there were a million things going through my head, and they just helped put my mind at ease. I would text them every other day and say I have no idea what’s going to happen, and they would just tell me to relax, it’ll come. Then I went in to talk to Flan one day, not expecting the decision to happen, and it happened. It just came to me, so they were right.”
Ultimately the decision of whether to continue to attempt an unlikely comeback or try to earn a medical hardship and return for a fifth season at Creighton was made by her and her alone, a decision that her head coach felt was had more than earned given what she has done on and off the court in her time as a Bluejay.
“Marissa has been a great ambassador for our program,” Flanery said. “She deserves the opportunity to have a lot of input in that decision, because of what she has committed to us over her time here.”
No decision will be made by the NCAA regarding the status of her medical hardship request until after the season — which has more than a month remaining in it — has concluded. Creighton begins the second half of Big East play on Friday, January 29 at home against Villanova at 7:00 p.m.