Post by longtimebooster on Apr 10, 2020 4:56:50 GMT -8
And here's the meat of the article, for those unwilling to click through and read it in its entirety. With Mensah in the lineup, we'd have been an unstoppable force. I have little doubt we'd have run the table on the regular season, as well as the MGC Tourney. Just imagine what this team would've done with the extra 8 to 10 possessions per game that Mensah provided -- 8 extra rebounds per game and 1 or 2 shot blocks. Ugh.
According to Kwaku Amoaku, Mensah’s guardian and the founder of the African Youth Basketball Organization that facilitated his move from Ghana, the 6-foot-10 sophomore is awaiting his latest blood tests and should know more in the coming weeks about “the next steps in the process” to begin playing against others again.
The target now is mid-June. Most Aztecs basketball players don’t return to campus for group workouts until the second session of summer school, which is scheduled to begin July 7 — although, with SDSU announcing Wednesday that summer classes will be online, it remains uncertain whether athletes will be invited back on campus.
“Any time before that would be amazing and awesome,” Amoaku said, “but I also don’t think they’re going to be allowed to do anything for at least another month. June is about the time they might be opening things up and letting kids go back in the gym.”
That doesn’t mean, however, Mensah wouldn’t have played in the NCAA Tournament last month.
Mensah and SDSU officials have declined comment on the specifics of his medical condition since he last played Dec. 28 against Cal Poly, but Amoaku said “we were pretty confident” he would have been cleared for the NCAA Tournament, which for SDSU, a projected 2 seed, would have started March 20 in Sacramento.
The plan was for Mensah to have practice restraints lifted a day or two earlier instead of working out on his own on the side, his routine since mid-January. The tournament was canceled before his doctors made a final determination.
“We were gearing up, absolutely, for him to play in the first weekend,” Amoaku said. “That was what I felt in my heart, that he would play. … He wouldn’t have started. But they were pretty confident that as good as Nathan is, it wouldn’t have taken him very long because of what he does and what he brings to the table. He’s not a jump shooter or anything like that. It would have been easier for him to step in and play (with short prep).
“Once the season got canceled, that took the stress off a little bit. It went back to where we had more time to figure out what’s going on and causing things, and what it’s going to take to get back 100 percent instead of trying to rush through it. With the crazy way the season ended, it probably ended up being a blessing in disguise for him — not for the rest of the squad, of course.
“But if we were (playing the tournament), I think he would have been ready to go.”
A pulmonary embolism is a blockage in one of the arteries transporting blood from the heart to the lungs, often the remnants of a blood clot that formed in the body’s lower extremities. The American College of Chest Physicians recommends, for standard cases, a minimum 90 days on anticoagulants.
That would have been the week of the Final Four.
“Because he was doing so well in his recovery, it was going to be cut a little short,” Amoaku said. “It still was going to be pretty close to 90 days.”
According to Kwaku Amoaku, Mensah’s guardian and the founder of the African Youth Basketball Organization that facilitated his move from Ghana, the 6-foot-10 sophomore is awaiting his latest blood tests and should know more in the coming weeks about “the next steps in the process” to begin playing against others again.
The target now is mid-June. Most Aztecs basketball players don’t return to campus for group workouts until the second session of summer school, which is scheduled to begin July 7 — although, with SDSU announcing Wednesday that summer classes will be online, it remains uncertain whether athletes will be invited back on campus.
“Any time before that would be amazing and awesome,” Amoaku said, “but I also don’t think they’re going to be allowed to do anything for at least another month. June is about the time they might be opening things up and letting kids go back in the gym.”
That doesn’t mean, however, Mensah wouldn’t have played in the NCAA Tournament last month.
Mensah and SDSU officials have declined comment on the specifics of his medical condition since he last played Dec. 28 against Cal Poly, but Amoaku said “we were pretty confident” he would have been cleared for the NCAA Tournament, which for SDSU, a projected 2 seed, would have started March 20 in Sacramento.
The plan was for Mensah to have practice restraints lifted a day or two earlier instead of working out on his own on the side, his routine since mid-January. The tournament was canceled before his doctors made a final determination.
“We were gearing up, absolutely, for him to play in the first weekend,” Amoaku said. “That was what I felt in my heart, that he would play. … He wouldn’t have started. But they were pretty confident that as good as Nathan is, it wouldn’t have taken him very long because of what he does and what he brings to the table. He’s not a jump shooter or anything like that. It would have been easier for him to step in and play (with short prep).
“Once the season got canceled, that took the stress off a little bit. It went back to where we had more time to figure out what’s going on and causing things, and what it’s going to take to get back 100 percent instead of trying to rush through it. With the crazy way the season ended, it probably ended up being a blessing in disguise for him — not for the rest of the squad, of course.
“But if we were (playing the tournament), I think he would have been ready to go.”
A pulmonary embolism is a blockage in one of the arteries transporting blood from the heart to the lungs, often the remnants of a blood clot that formed in the body’s lower extremities. The American College of Chest Physicians recommends, for standard cases, a minimum 90 days on anticoagulants.
That would have been the week of the Final Four.
“Because he was doing so well in his recovery, it was going to be cut a little short,” Amoaku said. “It still was going to be pretty close to 90 days.”