Horrible Kevin Ware Injury Mars Louisville-Duke Game

Oooof.

This unfortunately is not for the squeamish. But thankfully it was not a close up shot.

Sunday's Elite 8 Matchup between Duke and Louisville was delayed for about 15-minutes in the 1st Half after an absolutely horrific looking injury to Louisville Guard Kevin Ware.

Ware gave maximum effort in trying to block a jumper near the Louisville bench and landed awkwardly.

So awkwardly that when he landed, his shin turned in a direction that it shouldn't.

Again, we want to emphasize, this is NOT close up video of the injury (shot off someone's TV), but if you look closely, you can pretty clearly see it. We are NOT trying to exploit this by reporting it, but his injury is by far THE storyline of the 1st half of this game.

The look on the Louisville players faces said tons.

There are going to be people who question showing this video and it is a legitimate question. But as bad as the injury is and as sad as it was, the injury is now a major storyline in a national event. CBS has already been criticized for showing the replay at all, we disagree with the criticism. It's one thing to show it, it's necessary in order to tell the story and explain what happened. It's something entirely different to take it, show it, run it multiple times and zoom in. CBS did not do that. They focused on a telling the story via the players, fans and Cardinals coach Rick Pitino. We commend them for the way it was handled.

Ware was taken off the court on a stretcher and eventually left the arena via ambulance.

As of this posting, Louisville lead by 3 at the half. The winner of the game will square off with Wichita State at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta next weekend. The Shockers--shocked the world, beating Ohio State Saturday night.



PM UPDATE: Gannett Newspapers and the USA Today caught up with Joe Theismann whose injury on Monday Night Football had become the instant comparison:

"My world just came to a complete stop, it was just a horrible, horrible thing to see happen — I hate to see anybody have an injury that is anywhere near anything like I went through,” Theismann told USA TODAY Sports. “All of a sudden, it’s, ‘Oh my God!’

“It’s a terrible, terrible to see. My prayers go out to him, my heart goes out to him. I know what his family is going through.

“I have every belief that he’s going to be back and better than he was."

Here's the postgame with Coach Pitino, Gorgui Dieng, Russ Smith and Peyton Siva...
((HT: Louisville Courier Journal))