With 10:32 left in the game, Northwestern’s Alex Olah tried drawing a charge. He embellished the contact, throwing himself to the ground under the IU basket.
As he fell, Mosquera-Perea caught a pass and went straight to the basket. Only one problem — Olah was ?already there.
The 270-pound Wildcat center landed on Mosquera-Perea’s foot, sticking it to the floor. Mosquera-Perea’s momentum carried him forward, his knee buckling as it hit Olah’s shoulder.
Both players hit the ground. After a few seconds, Olah got up. Mosquera-Perea remained in the semicircle underneath the basket as the United Center went silent, save for his yells of pain.
“I was right there, so it was kind of like a scary look,” sophomore guard Stanford Robinson said.
IU Coach Tom Crean and a group of team doctors met him. After a few minutes of consolation, he stood up. Crean put two hands on him and uttered what appeared to be a quick prayer before three doctors helped him hobble to the locker room.
Three minutes later, an IU trainer walked out of the locker room and said one word: “Knee.”
Mosquera-Perea didn’t return to the game, but he was able to watch the final minutes from the IU bench. During a late-game timeout, he limped out of the Hoosiers’ locker room under his own power, a thick bag of ice wrapped around his knee.
As the IU finished its 71-56 win, its starting center sat at the end of the bench. A few players made their way to console him, but he kept his gaze straight ahead.
The injury was to the same knee Mosquera-Perea injured in a Jan. 12 practice. He missed IU’s next seven games returning with a brace to protect the knee.
Crean couldn’t give any information on Mosquera-Perea’s injury, saying he had to undergo testing and evaluation before an announcement could be made. He did say it was a byproduct of the earlier injury, though.
“It’s too early to tell,” Crean said. “He reaggravated an earlier injury. He’s being ?X-rayed, I believe, here.”
Should Mosquera-Perea’s be held out of IU’s third-round game against ?Maryland, Crean said he will likely turn to sophomore Collin Hartman and freshman Emmitt Holt to fill the void. Hartman started all seven games in Mosquera-Perea’s absence, but is still recovering from a knee injury of his own.
Mosquera-Perea will be further evaluated in the Friday morning, and then a decision will be made on his availability against the Terrapins. If he can’t play, an already undersized IU team will get even smaller against one of the Big Ten’s best frontcourts.
“That’s gonna hurt, if he’s injured,” Robinson said. “Right now it’s just praying, hope nothing’s wrong with him.”
