Champagnie getting closer to returning
Pitt received a devastating blow ahead of the team’s game with Louisville back on December 22nd. The program announced that leading scorer and rebounder Justin Champagnie sustained a knee injury that would sideline him for six to eight weeks.
Champagne missed that Louisville game, and was unavailable for the Syracuse game last week. It has been three weeks already since that announcement and he has only missed two games because of all the postponements the program has seen during that span.
Jeff Capel spoke to the media during the ACC coaches weekly teleconference on Monday morning, and he reveled that Champagnie is getting closer to returning to action and could be back much sooner than expected.
“I do expect him to be back before the six to eight weeks,” Capel said of Champagnie. “I still don’t know exactly when that will be, but he’s progressing very, very well.”
Champagne is still limited in what he can do on a basketball court at the moment. Capel said he is not practicing, but has been able to do some things and is progressing each day.
“He’s not practicing,” the Pitt coach said. "He’s able to do some stuff individually, starting to integrate him back to doing some stuff individually - some individual workouts. In a practice if we’re doing just shooting, like no contact, just shooting he’s able to do a little bit of that.”
Champagnie suffered a knee injury prior to last season. There was a fear that it could have been season-ending, but he did not miss any time and was ready to go to start last season. This injury has taken on a similar story in that the initial diagnosis does not appear to be as severe as initially thought.
“The injury was an injury to his knee, to his LCL, that was the injury,” Capel explained. “So we want to be very careful and we’re not going to play him back on the court until he believe that he’s completely healthy.”
Champagnie leads Pitt in scoring with 17.8 points per game. He is also the top rebounder in the ACC pulling down 12.3 boards a game. The Brooklyn native has three double-doubles this season, including a pair of 20-point 20-rebound games.
Pitt’s next scheduled game is set for Saturday as the team will welcome Syracuse to town for a noon tip at the Petersen Events Center. Champagnie likely won’t be ready for that game, but if it were up to him, he’d love to be back on the court with his teammates.
“He wants to go, he wants to play, and he wants to be able to do stuff now, but we’re going to be careful. I do not think it will be the six to eight weeks.”