Column: Curious case of Maurice Creek

Maurice Creek’s performance was almost inconceivable.

Thirty-one points? Against undefeated, No. 4 Kentucky? As a freshman?

“How about this Creek kid?” said UK Coach John Calipari after the Dec. 12, 2009, IU loss. “I’m telling you, we’ve played a lot of good teams. He’s as good as any player we’ve played. And that’s how you start to build a program.”

How quickly things change.

With Monday’s news that Creek underwent surgery to repair his left Achilles tendon, which could end his season, it seems IU Coach Tom Crean will need a different mortar to build his program.

But, unfortunately, we’ve known for a while that the injury-prone Creek would not be the cornerstone that a resurgence of Indiana basketball would be built around.

Creek’s career performance against the Wildcats was just one installment of an abbreviated freshman campaign, in which the 6-foot-5-inch guard led all Hoosiers in points per game with a 16.4 average by season’s end.

The buzz in Bloomington had already begun. Amidst a rebuilding year full of low expectations and a high loss total, it seemed this highly touted top-60 recruit from Hargrave Military Academy could be one of the few threads in this era’s silver
lining.

That all changed against Bryant University, as Creek’s left knee and hopes for the rest of his season came crashing onto Branch McCracken court Dec. 29, 2009. He would sit out the remaining 19 games of his freshman season before missing another 14 games last year with a season-ending stress fracture in his right knee.

Creek was already trying to return to health from those two injuries before this unrelated surgery made his road to recovery that much steeper.

What has happened to Creek during his tenure at IU has been extremely unlucky — even for the sports world, in which disabled lists and injured reserve decisions run rampant. But it was better for the IU basketball program to receive this news now than to get the diagnosis handed down once play started.

Although it was already a forgone conclusion Creek would not be able to play in the beginning of the year, Monday’s surgery solidifies his return to the team could possibly not even occur this season — if at all.

Knowing the former freshman standout is lost, Crean and his squad can begin planning around these circumstances instead of holding onto the hope that Creek could return.

This is a clear message to Victor Oladipo, Will Sheehey, Matt Roth and freshmen Austin Etherington and Remy Abell that this is their shot. A thinner bench means they will have more opportunities to succeed and need to take advantage of them when they are presented.

Obviously, this should ring most true with Abell and Etherington, who could have that breakout performance that Creek experienced just two seasons ago.
So what’s next for Creek?

I wish I could tell you if I knew for sure whether he was going to return to the hardwood this year.

Heck, I wish there wasn’t a small piece of me that thinks Creek played in his last collegiate game last January against Michigan — but there is.

Realistically, I think Creek sits all of this season, takes a medical redshirt and will be able to make his return before he graduates, barring further injury.

Our bodies are strange, unpredictable things.

Sometimes they randomly produce cancerous cells that take away loved ones, and sometimes they take away the ability to play the game we love so much.

This third injury in 22 months isn’t the last chapter in the story of Maurice Creek.

Whether life takes him away from basketball or back to it, Creek will maintain the “never say die” attitude that has gotten him this far.

That mindset allowed him to preserve during the years after his father left him and his mother, get his grades up at Hargrave and get the standardized test scores he needed to be eligible to play for IU.

As Creek tweeted Monday, “I Have a Desire to make a Movie About Myself... Thinking of A Title...Hummm what about God Never Gives You What You Can’t Handle.”

­— azaleon@indiana.edu