WRAL Sports Fan

North Carolina

Lawson confident he'll play against Gonzaga

By David Reynolds

Mar 24, 2009

North Carolina fans can breathe a sigh of relief.

Ty Lawson didn’t put his toe in hot water and Epson salt again.

Lawson switched his father’s suggested remedy for a compression wrap and ice-pack, and, according to UNC’s point guard, his left big toe was feeling much better Tuesday than it was in the days following the March 8 game against the Blue Devils.

The ACC Player of the Year walked into the news conference room with only a slight limp in his step, and both he and coach Roy Williams sounded confident about Lawson’s chances of getting on the court against Gonzaga.

“It didn’t get that bad. We kept a compression wrap on it so it didn’t get any bigger. The swelling stayed down so right now, it’s just icing it and getting more mobility in it,” Lawson said.

“I’ll think I’ll be able to rest it enough and be able to play in the game on Friday.”

The first questions asked to Lawson and Williams in the news conference were both on the status on the point guard’s toe, and Williams decided to have a little fun with the question that has been consuming headlines around college basketball for the past three weeks.

“I call him every hour 11 minutes after the hour and ask him if he’s changed the gel and changed the pad, those kinds of things,” Williams joked. “He tells me that he does, and instead of Epson salt and hot water, he’s using vinegar and cold water.”

“But to answer your question, we had shooting practice yesterday, and he shot just like everybody else. He did not have a lot of swelling after the game. It is sore, and yesterday it was more sore than it was on game day.”

Lawson said running the court on Saturday against the Tigers gave him confidence that he could play with the injury for the rest of the tournament.

He got a scare in the first half when he heard a pop in his toe while guarding LSU’s Bo Spencer, and he left the game to let a trainer work on his toe on the bench.

But when he re-entered the game, the toe appeared not to be a non-issue. He said the pain dissipated once he got into the flow of the contest, and he said it didn’t return until the game’s final minutes, after UNC had built an insurmountable advantage.

“That’s probably the main thing I needed was confidence in running on it. It did hurt, but confidence that it wouldn’t fall off or something like that,” Lawson said. “It gave me a test on how fast I could run on it, and it was pretty fast.”

Lawson has been icing his toe this morning, icing it before practice or after practice and icing two or three times after he gets home. At his house, he said puts his toe in a trash can filled with ice and water for around ten minutes every hour until he goes to bed.

Lawson’s also been working out his toe in the pool as well as using tape and a compression wrap to keep down the swelling.

But even with all the treatments Lawson is undergoing, Williams said the only true cure will be rest – six weeks of it – until Lawson’s ailment will heal.

“it’s here, it’s going to be here, it’s not going away, it’s going to hurt the rest of the season until he can take that time off,” Williams said. “Everybody that’s ever had one of these things told us that the very first day.”

Still, Lawson’s stats from the LSU game – 23 points, 21 of those in the second half, six assists and zero turnovers – suggest that he’s managed to adapt his game to the discomfort in his toe, or at least tough out the pain so it doesn’t negatively affect his performance.

Williams said he hopes his point guard can be as effective and tough in this weekend in UNC’s Sweet 16 matchup against Gonzaga.

“I don’t think he’s going to be 100 percent, but we’ll take whatever we can get, especially if it’s like that performance Saturday,” Williams said. “That’s the best I’ve had I point guard play in 21 years as a head coach. I even told him I was thinking about calling him Rambo instead of Dennis the Menace.”