Gruesome injury sidelines Louisville's Ware

Talk about a freak accident. I'm sure most people have already heard by now about the injury suffered by Louisville Cardinals men's basketball player Kevin Ware during a game against Duke in the NCAA Tournament Elite 8 round.

For those who don't know about it, honestly, you should probably be glad you don't. It was one of the most gruesome sports injuries I've ever seen, if not the most gruesome.

In the first half of Sunday's game, Ware jumped up in an attempt to block a shot and when he landed, his leg buckled under him and he hit the floor, obviously hurt. Since the camera that was watching the play was on the other side of the court, it didn't give a very close view of what happened, but based on what I could see, I knew it was bad.

When I first saw it happen, it reminded me a lot of something I saw in a college football game last October. In a game against Tennessee on Oct. 27, South Carolina running back Marcus Lattimore's leg was folded underneath him and one of the Tennessee defenders trying to bring him down.

As Lattimore and the defender flipped over, Lattimore's leg could be seen simply flopping over as if there were no bone or any other rigid material in his knee. As it turned out, Lattimore had dislocated his knee, tearing three ligaments in the process.

Well, though it may have looked similar from a distance, this injury was even worse.

As it turns out, Ware hadn't done anything to his knee. Rather, he had suffered a compound fracture of his tibia.

I didn't actually see this part, but from what I've heard, Ware broke both the tibia and fibula in his right leg and the tibia actually punctured the skin. He underwent surgery Sunday evening and was released from an Indianapolis, Ind., hospital Tuesday.

During the two-hour procedure Sunday, doctors reset the bone and inserted a rod to stabilize the tibia while it heals. The puncture wound created by the bone being forced through the skin was also closed.

Doctors speculated that some sort of bone density issue or previously undetected stress fractures may have contributed to the injury. Though it's uncertain exactly why or how the injury happened, there's one thing everyone agreed on: it was a fluke incident that shouldn't ever happen.

I could certainly see a guy getting hurt doing what Ware did, but not something like this. The way he jumped and landed, one might expect to see a sprained ankle or a knee injury, but not a compound fracture like that.

What struck me most in this whole situation wasn't so much the injury itself or any of that. It was the reaction when it occurred. Almost immediately after it happened, several Louisville players could be seen collapsing on the floor and crying.

Louisville coach Rick Pitino said he walked over to where Ware was lying on the sideline, saw the injury and nearly vomited.

"I went over and I was going to help him up, and then all of a sudden, I saw what it was," Pitino told ESPN after the game. "And I literally almost threw up. I just wanted to grab a towel to cover it up, but all the players came over and saw it."

Those players reacted with everything from Peyton Siva pacing around the floor staring at the ceiling to Wayne Blackshear going down to his hands and knees and Russ Smith and Chane Behanan sobbing uncontrollably.

The injury occurred with 6 minutes, 33 seconds left on the clock in the opening half as Ware jumped to contest Tyler Thornton's 3-pointer. After something that horrendous, it's easy to figure out where everyone's focus was, but Ware was having none of it.

He asked Pitino to call the team over and actually told them not to worry about him, but just get back out there and win. And that's exactly what the Cardinals did.

At the time of the injury, the score was tied at 42, but Louisville got back on the court and went on a 17-2 run and eventually took the game by a final score of 85-63.

After the game, there was the obligatory posing for media with the Midwest Regional Trophy, Behanan took Ware's jersey and paraded it around the arena, holding it up like a prizefighter celebrating his championship belt. Pitino took the microphone right in the middle of the all-tournament team announcement and asked the crowd for a Kevin Ware chant and everyone in attendance happily obliged.

I've been saying since this year's NCAA tournament brackets were announced that Louisville was my pick to win it all. Well, I was pretty sure then, but I know it now.

I think just about any team in any sport would be hard-pressed to look at this and justifiably call itself tough. I mean, honestly, situations really don't get much more adverse than this one.

There might be three more teams heading to Atlanta, Ga., this weekend, but since Ware is now planning to be there with his team, I think it might be about time for everybody else to pack it in. If the Cardinals were able to be that intense and dominate as much as they did Sunday in Ware's absence, imagine how it will be when he's on the bench.

You don't get a much better motivation and reason to win than that. I don't know about anybody else, but this year's Final Four is one I won't miss.

Louisville plays this year's Cinderella, Wichita State, on Saturday, for a chance to face the winner of Saturday's other game between Syracuse and Michigan in the National Championship game.