Q: What is Jeff's status?
Todd Lickliter: He will not be available tomorrow (against Purdue). I think it's just going to be treatment and day-by-day from what I understand. He's got a hamstring strain from when he slipped and fell. It's sore. There's no question. We all know how tough Jess is. He's playing with a fracture in his wrist. He's really tough. We'll just have to see what's best for him as far was health wise. But we don't expect him to be available tomorrow.
Q: What about Cyrus? Is his ankle starting to feel a little better? Do you expect him to get significant minutes tomorrow?
TL: It's been interesting because at Northwestern we got some good minutes out of him and he didn't seem too sore. And the day of Wisconsin during the shoot around, I was concerned for him just because of the soreness of it. It was very painful. That's why I decided not to play him. The way Wisconsin plays, he was going to have to do a lot of movement on the floor and it was going to aggravate it more. We decided to let it rest.
He went a little bit on it (on Thursday). We'll look at him again today. We feel like we're going to be able to get some minutes out of him. But it's something that without a lot of explanation really...I know how hard the trainers are working and we're doing everything and he's working hard, too, but we can't get the soreness to...we can't get relief for him.
Q: So how do you handle the point guard situation without Jeff there?
TL: We'd prefer to have Jeff. There's no question. Not over somebody, but we're just very pleased with the way he's run it. The other night I felt we were fairly effective in his absence. That's encouraging. We do not want him to be absent, but there's nothing we can do about that. He's going to be gone. We played a few minutes and I think we're probably going to have to share that responsibility. I feel good. Jermain (Davis) has run the point for us some. Jake has run it some. I feel good about Devan (Bawinkle) handling it. Fortunately, we've got more than one guy on the floor at one time that can handle the ball. They've not gotten us into offense a lot, except for Jermain, but I think we'll be able to do that.
Q: So, it will just be Jermain stepping into that starting spot?
TL: Well, I anticipate that. But we're going to practice against today and see. Like I said, I think we're going to have to fill that spot kind of by committee. We're going to maybe have to have three point guards on the floor instead of just one.