Lucas O'Rear done for the year

by **unipanther99** » February 3rd, 2011, 11:37 am

Mentioned it in the game thread, but it's now official. He's having surgery this afternoon.

http://wcfcourier.com/sports/college/un ... 002e0.html

**Sponsor**

by **Snaggletooth** » February 3rd, 2011, 11:39 am

That is really to bad especially when he was just playing basketball for the love of the game and his true post-college skills were in baseball.

by **Aces1982** » February 3rd, 2011, 11:43 am

Wow. That changes things.

by **musiccitybulldog** » February 3rd, 2011, 11:44 am

I'm sure everyone wishes him the best, and a quick recovery. I always enjoyed watching him play basketball.

by **unipanther99** » February 3rd, 2011, 11:47 am

Aces1982 wrote:Wow. That changes things.

That's interesting, considering few here have been predicting any kind of all-conference honors for the guy. Personally, I felt he was having a Defensive Player of the Year kind of season, and probably 2nd team all-conference. In many ways, he's the heart and soul of this basketball team. He will have to continue that roll on the bench now... Sad day in Panthertown. :cry:

by **TylerDurden** » February 3rd, 2011, 11:50 am

That's too bad.

I hope this doesn't affect his baseball prospects.

by **Sycamore_DevilDog** » February 3rd, 2011, 11:59 am

I hate to see any team lose a key player to injury, especially a senior. No doubt O'Rear was a major contributor to UNI's success during his career. Best of luck to the big guy.

by **Ali** » February 3rd, 2011, 12:15 pm

We didn't have much heighth to start with so losing Luke hurts us terribly. What a shame.

by **valleychamp** » February 3rd, 2011, 12:41 pm

Tough tough news for the panthers. Gut check time against impossible odds right now for UNI.

O'Rear was a great player and had a spectacular career. A great panther that will be missed.

by **Aargh** » February 3rd, 2011, 2:09 pm

That is awful - and it goes way beyond our seasonal distraction called basketball.

It will affect O'Rear and it could be a huge detriment in his baseball career. It's tough enough to get started in the minors and impress the people you've got to impress to progress through the system. Getting a late start on that means others in the same entering group have the opportunity to impress and O'Rear gets to spend his first year trying to catch up to the progress of those who started sooner.

It's going to take one tough character to overcome that. I have a feeling O'Rear is that tough character.

It's bad when any player gets hurt, but when it interferes with a career choice (even if it's only a career option for a couple of years), that's a mess in that player's life. I really hate to see that.