Lingering back problems will sideline senior forward Luke Axtell during the post-season, which effectively ends his collegiate career as a Jayhawk, Kansas University basketball head coach Roy Williams announced Thursday.
“This is a big loss for us as a team, but an even bigger blow to Luke,” Williams said. “He has tried very hard to play, but his year has just been one problem after another.”
Axtell played in 19 of 28 games this season. He averaged 5.3 points and 2.6 rebounds.
“He had a great pre-season and then was slowed with an ankle injury,” Williams said in a prepared statment.”He came back and there was another ankle injury. He recovered and struggled with the back problem, which is the worst of all. Luke just can’t practice or play without tremendous pain and it’s not going away.”
Dr. Ken Wetzberger, who serves as the team physician, said Axtell has MRI-proven degenerative disc disease in his lower back.
“This was there in the original MRI in 1998 and this season has progressed both symptomatically and on the repeat MRI two months ago,” Wertzberger said. “Multiple different methods of conservative treatment have been attempted. Nothing relieved his symptoms enough to allow him to participate.”
Axtell missed KU’s first four games of the season due to a sprained left ankle suffered in practice on Nov. 7 after coming down on the foot of a teammate. After playing four games, he resprained it on Dec. 11 and missed the DePaul and Tulsa games.
The 6-10 Austin, Texas, native missed KU’s games against Iowa State, Colorado and Kansas State after being diagnosed with a degenerative disc in his lower back. He saw brief action in only two of KU’s final five regular season games.
“We hope there will be basketball in Luke’s future, but this back problem has to be resolved,” Williams said. “Both Luke and I felt that it was best for him to stop at this time and he will look into other medical solutions to solve his back problems.”
