Generals win; lose LaLonde in season opener against Cloverleaf

  • By Brian Questel
  • December 11, 2010
  • 270
                        
For 32 minutes, Craig Martin was pleased with what he saw in the Wooster boy’s opening-night win at Cloverleaf. The immediate seconds following the Generals’ triumph were another story. As the clock wound down to zero, Wooster senior Alex LaLonde picked up a long rebound and raced to the Cloverleaf basket with pursuers close behind. LaLonde hammered home his 24th point of the game as time expired with a one-hand jam and the final points of Wooster’s 60-53 victory. What he wasn’t successful in doing, though, was avoiding contact with the Colt defender as he went up and then fell to the floor, hitting it in pain. After a trip to the Wooster ER, the outcome of those crowd-igniting points was news Martin and Co. didn’t want to hear – LaLonde had broken his wrist and was slated to miss four to six weeks as a result. “It definitely will have an impact,” said Martin. “For the first game we really had people step up and play well and Alex played well. They threw a box-and-one at us, but we adjusted and Alex adjusted well to that.” LaLonde is going to have to adjust to some time off for now. “The prognosis is four to six weeks. We’ll see how it goes though recovery,” said LaLonde, who was in a splint Tuesday night while awaiting a cast. “It’s a compression fracture of the radius bone in my wrist. It’s not a terrible fracture, but it’s not great. They didn’t need to reset it, which was good. It was too swollen to cast (Tuesday), so they’ll probably cast it Thursday. “ The good news is that it was the right-handed LaLonde’s left wrist, and he took a philosophical approach to the injury. “It’s not an ACL or MCL,” he said. “It should be a short recovery process considering and it will be easier being my off-hand. I’ll take a week off and then start running and then shooting. I’ll try to keep my form and stay in shape, which will be nice. That will make the recovery process easier from that standpoint.” LaLonde’s injury is going to have “an impact over the next couple weeks for us,” said Martin. “It is a broken wrist and the prognosis is four to six weeks,” said Martin. “We’re hoping for the shorter. Obviously we’ll have to have people step up in Alex’s absence and this will open up opportunities for other players. One of the things I love about this team is its work ethic and how hard they work and their ability to step up to the challenge. “The core of this group of players was on last year’s 17-3 JV team. They have proven they are competitors and will step up to the challenge. I’m looking at it from the standpoint that when Alex returns that will make us a stronger team.” As evidence of that, sophomore post Grant Stokes tossed in 17 points and grabbed six rebounds. “Grant really stepped up … and that was a good debut for him as a sophomore on the varsity level,” praised Martin. “He’s an intelligent player. He’s kind of undersized for the position he plays, but he has really good post moves. Even as a freshman, he probably had the best pure post moves. I didn’t anticipate 17 points, but I anticipated he would play well. “James Hunter really stepped up, too. He didn’t score, but he played really good defense and he’s our energy guy. Wes Welker came off the bench and played really well. Von Blair didn’t score, but he had five assists, and Luke McGee played well. Duke (Price) was real steady – he had eight points, had good control of the offense and set things up. Defensively he was real steady.” If LaLonde is out four to six weeks, he will miss five games. The good news out of that is three of those games are at home and the fourth is at The College of Wooster. “Three of the five are OCC (Ohio Cardinal Conference) games, but two are at home,” said Martin. “That’s the good news.” Wooster opened OCC play Dec. 10 at home against West Holmes.


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