St. Louis, MO - Kendall Marshall got onto the floor of the Edward Jones Dome on Saturday, doing some passing, some catching, some shooting, some sweating.
Some hoping.
Whether North Carolina's indispensable sophomore point guard will be available Sunday for the Midwest Regional final against Kansas remains uncertain. That he was able to go through a limited workout five days after surgery on a broken right wrist was promising but not necessarily a predictor. A final decision on whether he'll play won't come until sometime after the Tar Heels' pregame shootaround.
"It's a positive, they said, that there's not that much swelling at all. The bone is getting great blood flow. Things like that," Marshall said. "As far as the strength in my wrist, it has gotten better every 24 hours.
"We'll see. If it continues to get better, there is a shot. But as of right now - if we were to play in 20 minutes - no, I wouldn't be playing."
The consequences of that for Carolina are now all too apparent.
Marshall, whose 351 assists this season - 9.8 a game - are a school and Atlantic Coast Conference record, watched from the bench Friday night as the top-seeded Tar Heels struggled to beat 13th-seeded Ohio 73-65 in overtime.
The nation's second-highest scoring offense was a mess, scoring four points in a six-minute stretch in the first half, then just four points in a little more than 6½ minutes as a 10-point lead dissolved in the second. North Carolina shot 40% from the field, star forward Harrison Barnes hitting three of his 16 attempts.
He and six other players had multiple turnovers, and the Tar Heels totaled a season-high 24.
Statistically, freshman Stilman White stepped in nicely at the point. In 32 minutes, nearly three times more than he'd previously played in a college game, he missed all four of his shots from the field but handed out six assists and went turnover-free.
When the team gathered afterward, coach Roy Williams says, White's teammates gave him a spontaneous ovation.
But he wasn't Marshall. And Carolina just wasn't Carolina. The Tar Heels shot only 39% in regulation. Their spate of turnovers led to 26 Ohio points.
They exploited a considerable size advantage, 7-foot Tyler Zeller and 6-11 John Henson feeding a 63-30 advantage on the boards. But had the Bobcats' Walter Offutt not missed a critical foul shot with 25.3 seconds left, the Heels might not have made it to overtime.
"We don't turn it over very much because Kendall is in charge of the basketball, and so we were ugly because we didn't have Kendall," Williams said. "Hopefully, one game under our belt will help us not be as ugly tomorrow."
Said Henson: "We've played with him for two years, and he's helped us out a lot. Especially me and 'Z' down low. He is a security blanket.
"Coach always says to make the easy play, and Stilman did make the easy play. Kendall might make the electrifying pass or the electrifying assist."
Marshall, who shot 80% and totaled 29 points and 21 assists in North Carolina's first two NCAA tournament games, broke a bone in the wrist in the second half of last weekend's victory over Creighton. One positive was that it's his non-shooting wrist. A screw was surgically inserted the next day.
Saturday afternoon, he sat in the Tar Heels' locker room with both the wrist and his right elbow - which also was jarred in his fall against Creighton - wrapped in ice.
He relished the return to practice. "The first two times we went up the court, doing the warm-up drill, I was going as fast as I could," Marshall said. "I was out of breath, and I was, like, 'I've got to slow down. We've still got a full practice ahead of us.' Sitting down for six days straight, not being able to do anything, that's been frustrating. It felt good just to get out there and move around.
"I definitely felt the pain, but there's going to be pain there for the next six weeks. It's just a matter of how much I can take."
"Now," Williams said, "we want to see if it bothers him or if it pains him or if it swells up or if his toes curls or whatever happens next. And then tomorrow at (the) shoot-around, we'll try to probably do the same thing.
"And then, there's two things that have to happen. One, he has to feel comfortable that he's not hurting. And then two, I have to decide: Can he be effective in the game with his situation?"
If the answer to either is no, it's back to White and, to a lesser degree, senior Justin Watts.
Mop-haired and a modest 6-foot, 160 pounds, White looks like the teenager he is. He won't turn 20 until July. Only a year ago, he was starring at Hoggard High School in Wilmington, N.C., his college scholarship offers limited to four - from Carolina, UNC Wilmington, Brigham Young and Utah State - because of plans to put his career on hold after this season to serve a two-year Mormon church mission.
Williams made him an offer when point guard Larry Drew II left the Tar Heels in the middle of last season.
White's 32 minutes against Ohio were seven more than he'd totaled in five previous games in the ACC and NCAA tournaments.
"It's definitely different now. I definitely got my feet wet," he said a day after his first start. "The pinch-me stage-type thing, you kind of have to put that away quickly. I haven't been there before. But all these (other) guys have, and . . . playing with them is a lot easier because they're so good."
Whom to expect? White? Marshall, most likely at less than 100%? Kansas coach Bill Self said he won't play a guessing game in preparations for the Tar Heels, though he anticipates Marshall will play.
"The bottom line is we are who we are," Self said. ". . . There's a lot of things that you could certainly do. But we're going to prepare, basically, to try to guard North Carolina, regardless of who is out there at the point."
USA Today