A few weeks back, the Anonymous Eagle Bureau of Nonsensical Investigations put their brains to work on finding out what was going on with Marquette sophomore forward Davante Gardner after he appeared to injure his knee during the Golden Eagles' game against Villanova. We eventually learned that Gardner suffered a left knee sprain and a further investigation by the AEBNI reveals that he has not played since.
As can be expected with things like this, the question has now become "When will Davante Gardner play again?" Luckily for us, we have numerous reporters on various levels inquiring about Gardner's status. Unluckily for us, we're not getting the same answers.
Follow along through the jump and I'll explain.
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Marquette beat reporter (and new Twitter user) Tom Enlund wrote up a blog post about the outlook on Ox for the rest of the season. Here's a quote directly from Marquette head coach Buzz Williams:
"I don’t know," said Williams. "He is progressing but when he can play? I don’t know. My gut said when he got hurt that he would play in this game. I have become more involved in his rehab over the last four days and he is improving."
That's a pretty standard Buzz response regarding a player injury. It reads a lot like everything that Buzz said about Chris Otule's injury.
But we have to compare that exact quote from Buzz with two lines in a blog post from ESPN.com's Andy Katz about the impact of sophomore forward Jamil Wilson on the team:
Third-leading scorer and rebounder Davante Gardner is out at least for the next two weeks with a knee injury.
The coaching staff said Gardner may not come back until the Big East tournament.
First of all, these two lines contradict each other. Two weeks from yesterday when Katz wrote this is Marquette's regular season finale against Georgetown. If Gardner's going to miss two weeks, he can't play until the Big East tournament. If Gardner plays before the BET, then he's not going to miss the next two weeks.
Second of all, what's with the definitive and yet not directly sourced two week time frame when Buzz tells Enlund directly that he has no idea? Earlier in Katz's post, he has a direct quote from associate head coach Tony Benford, so if this was Benford giving him the time frame, Katz would obviously have no problem reconnecting that to Benford. But it's sourced as "the coaching staff," and Katz repeated "the staff" in a response to loyal AE reader @BBaranowski on Twitter. (Aside: The original tweet didn't use Katz's Twitter tag in it. So now Katz is spending his Saturday afternoons running searches on Twitter for his own name instead of, oh, I don't know, PAYING ATTENTION TO COLLEGE BASKETBALL?)
So, we're left with two different answers to the same question. I guess that makes the new question, "Who do you believe?"