Less than 3 months after grotesque injury, Roland, Aggies back in Washington state for NCAAs

Roland, A&M return after season-changing injury

SPOKANE, Wash. — Derrick Roland spent Christmas Eve in a hospital bed in Seattle. IVs were in his arms. Blood oozed from scars on a right leg full of metal, the result of surgery hours after his leg shattered during a game at Washington.

The soul of Texas A&M basketball was seemingly a world away from home, his team, his basketball life.

Now he is back in Washington state. So are his remade Aggies, set to begin the NCAA tournament.

“I’m blessed,” Roland said Thursday in the locker room a day before his fifth-seeded team (23-9) meets Utah State (27-7).

He didn’t have crutches. He wasn’t wearing a leg cast or walking boot. He hasn’t ruled out an appeal to the NCAA for an extra year of eligibility through a medical redshirt.

“I’m great,” he said, smiling in a way he could not less than three months ago while sedated in that room in Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center. “Way ahead of schedule.”

Early in the second half on Dec. 22, the Aggies’ second-leading scorer went up for a layin and came down hard under the basket on a routine play.

The sound of his leg breaking was so loud that Washington’s Quincy Pondexter thought it was Roland’s back hitting the court. Pondexter said the protruding fracture was “one of the nastiest things I’ve ever seen” and fans on that side of the stands gasped and turned away.

Hours later, drained coach Mark Turgeon sat on a couch in the hospital unsure of how he would replace Roland’s Big 12-best defense, or his leadership. His team had flown home without him and fellow senior Donald Sloan. Both stayed with Roland.

Before the team left, Sloan called a players-only meeting at the team’s Seattle hotel. Sloan stressed the need for everyone to do more with Roland out.

“We all said, ‘We had to do it, in honor of ‘D-Ro,’” sophomore Dash Harris said.

It was Harris who stepped into Roland’s role as lockdown defender, which he will resume Friday against Utah State’s multidimensional Jared Quayle. Roland has been Harris’ mentor, always at his side to provide advice on how to defend opponents.

Three freshmen emerged to provide unexpected depth. One, Ray Turner, a freshman from Jones High School in Houston, hadn’t played until the night Roland’s leg snapped like dry wood.

A six-day break over Christmas allowed the stunned Aggies to regroup without stumbling through a game. Players and coaches who were a team became a family.

The Aggies won three straight after Roland’s injury. Eleven wins in 16 games inside the rugged Big 12 cemented their place in another NCAA tournament.

“I have really good kids with great character,” Turgeon said on the eve of A&M’s fifth consecutive NCAA tournament. “And we kind of changed our approach. We were a pressure team with Derrick. We were fast — we were really fast. We could really pressure. Now we have a lot younger team. … And we changed our philosophy offensively a bit.

“We might lose (Friday) to Utah State, but that won’t change how I know our guys are really tough — physically and mentally.”

Through it all, Turgeon called Roland routinely, sometimes at 5 a.m., sometimes near midnight, just to make sure Roland was feeling all right. The coach’s wife made meals for him.

“Oh, yeah,” Roland said, his eyes wide. “Her pasta was my favorite.”

Texas governor Rick Perry called “to tell me he was proud of me, to stay strong, and that he understood what I was going through,” Roland said.

Roland made it home for Christmas after his surgery. His aunt flew in from Dallas, and they flew back to Texas on a medical transport plane on Christmas Day. Roland spent the long, uncomfortable trip strapped to gurney.

Roland’s college career is likely over, unless the NCAA makes an exception for him. Its rules stipulate a medical hardship waiver may be granted for a fifth year of eligibility before an athlete has played in 20 percent of the team’s games in a season. Roland had played in all 12 of Texas A&M’s 29 regular-season games before the injury, more than 40 percent of the total.

“It was something I wouldn’t want for anybody else to go through. It was a tough situation,” Roland said of his college career likely ending so horrifically.

Of the prospects of the NCAA granting a waiver, Roland just smiled and said optimistically, “Fifty-fifty.

“If it happens, it would be terrific.”