It's been a tough year for the entire Penn State men's basketball team, but junior forward Andrew Ott has fought through the added burden of terrible pain in his left shoulder.
Ott, a transfer from Villanova, said he's had to play with a partially separated labrum injury in his left shoulder for at least a year, an injury similar to what former Nittany Lion Jamelle Cornley endured in his left shoulder last season.
Cornley, who could be heard screaming on the court during last season's George Mason game when his shoulder popped out of its socket, talked to Ott's father at the Lions' game against Michigan State Saturday about the intensity of the pain his son could potentially go through.
"The pain is excruciating," Cornley said Monday while visiting the team at practice.
"It comes out of the socket and then goes back in, so depending on the severity of it, it can stay out.
"It hurts, but that's part of the game. Ott is tough enough to where he may experience it sometimes, but he'll be able to bounce back and play as hard as he can."
At practice Monday, Ott wore a shoulder sleeve to protect the range of motion of his left shoulder.
He did not wear the sleeve in Saturday's game because he didn't feel comfortable enough to play with it, he said. He also added he'd decide Wednesday whether or not to play with the protective pad on his shoulder for Penn State's game that night at Northwestern.
The injury held Ott out of the team's loss to Ohio State Feb. 3 and has caused nagging pain for the forward since last season, he said.
"It's one of those things that's not really going to get better," Ott said. "It's probably either going to stay the same or get worse."
Dr. Ben Wedro, an emergency physician who practices out of Wisconsin, said repairing the labrum -- a long band of cartilage that allows the shoulder its full range of motion -- is almost always done by arthroscopic surgery.
After the surgery, he said, three to six weeks of instability are usually required. Then, he added, six months may be needed to strengthen the muscle back to its peak.
Since Ott's shoulder dislocated, Wedro believes his injury is a bankart injury, which occurs when the shoulder comes out of its joint.
"Matt Hasselback, a quarterback from the Seahawks had that," Wedro said in a telephone interview Monday.
"Those can sometimes be sensitive as well."
Cornley explained that Ott's shoulder pad prevents the shoulder from popping out of place to a certain extent, but during the course of a basketball season, the shoulder is likely to separate on a play requiring full extension or lateral movement of the shoulder -- like reaching for a rebound.
Late last season, Cornley played with a bandage on his shoulder and preferred it to the pad Ott sported because he found it more stable, he said. The injury plagued Cornley since his sophomore season, when he initially injured himself, and lingered throughout his stint at Penn State.
Cornley underwent surgery April 28 to repair ligaments in his shoulder and said he continues to stretch the shoulder frequently to keep it in playing condition. The Lions will likely need Ott to rebound well against Northwestern.
In Saturday's 65-54 loss to Michigan State, the Lions were outrebounded by 14 and grabbed only four offensive rebounds.
"We're long, and we're active and we have the will to rebound," Cornley said of his former teammates. "It was tough because we took a lot of long shots, so it's hard to get those long offensive rebounds when guys aren't sticking around the bucket as much."
