Kansas State’s depth in its backcourt has already been trimmed.
The Wildcats lost freshman Cartier Diarra to a season-ending knee injury, the school announced Wednesday. The 6-foot-4, 185-pounder suffered the injury during a workout earlier this month.
“We are obviously disappointed for Cartier,” Kansas State coach Bruce Weber said in a statement. “He had worked extremely hard to get this point and had shown a lot of promise in workouts since joining our team in June. However, the focus now is on Cartier and his recovery. The good news is that he has only touched the surface of his potential on the basketball court and we look forward to seeing how he comes back from this setback.”
The injury, of which Kansas State did not specify the nature, required surgery Wednesday.
While Diarra wasn’t expected to play major minutes for the Wildcats, he was being counted on to play a reserve role for them. Losing any player he was counting on to contribute is significant for Weber, who is coming off two disappointing season and needs to placate a fanbase that just saw a successful alum, Brad Underwood, hired by Big 12 foe Oklahoma State. Kamau Stokes will carry the load in the backcourt for Kansas State, but the Wildcats really could have benefited from Diarra providing productive minutes off the bench.
Three months before the start of practice, and Kansas State already has gotten its first bad news of the season.