Nov. 2, 2016
SAN DIEGO -
By Mick McGrane, GoAztecs.com Senior Writer
(@MickOnTheMesa)
Matt Shrigley wasn't supposed to be doing this. Not now. Not yet.
The medical literature said so. The skeptics said so. And the odds definitely said so.
After all, basketball players incurring the severity of the knee injury suffered by Shrigley are expected to spectate, not lift spectators from their seats in prolonged bouts of delirium.
"I told everyone the day I had knee surgery last summer that I would be back in five months and they all laughed and chuckled," Shrigley said. "They all looked at me and said, 'An ACL injury? That's nine months to a year.' "
Team doctors cleared him to play in five months and 23 days.
"I went from being 6-7 and weighing 200 pounds, feeling strong, feeling great, to the next day tearing my ACL and having knee surgery," he said. "My quad muscles just shut off. I'm sitting on a couch looking at myself and thinking, 'Wow, you're this big and this strong and you can't flex your quad.
"It hurts; it's hard. It's tough to look at yourself in that light. You just have to keep reminding yourself that you're young, you're healthy, you're strong and that you're going to come back from it."
So there he was, mid-February, seven months after injuring his right knee while playing basketball at a local fitness center. In his first six games after returning to a team that so desperately missed his perimeter shooting, Shrigley had taken aim 14 times. Nary a one had found the bottom of the net.
Suddenly, however, in a display that began with a bang and culminated in an explosion, Shrigley connected on his first four three-point attempts in a 70-61 home win over Air Force. The first, which drew an ovation worthy of a game-winning shot, came with 6:06 gone in the contest. Before he was through, he hit three more in a span of 2:26, briefly turning the affair into a one-man show that had the crowd chanting his name and had Shrigley itching to fire.
"Every player that makes two, three or four shots always wants that next shot," said Shrigley, whose 0-for-14 start included an 0-for-13 mark beyond the arc. "The first couple of games were OK, but then you start thinking about (missing shots). But you have to be comfortable with yourself and know that the ball is going to go in."
And know that regardless of the hand you've been dealt, adversity can be terribly callous when paired with self-pity.
"I couldn't stand up to go to the bathroom, so my dad (Rich, who played at Boston College and was an assistant coach at Iowa) would wheel a chair over to me and drag me across the room so that I could use the bathroom," he said. "I had keep my leg straight, so he would sit with me and push on my leg until my knee was straight, a week after surgery. He's been a huge part of who I am."
To the point where Shrigley, who originally wore number 40, now wears 20, the same number worn by his father as a college player. It's a family affair, the signature that has always marked Steve Fisher's program since his arrival 18 years ago.
"Matt and I both go out now and neither one of us thinks about his knee," said Fisher, whose team opens the 2016-17 campaign at Viejas Arena Thursday night with an exhibition against UCSD. "No one worked harder to get back for an opportunity to play than Matt did after he tore his ACL. I'm very proud of his toughness and his commitment. Now he needs to say, 'I'm going to make every open shot I take and I'm going to take every open shot I get,' and not worry about results.
"Matt will bring a fifth-year senior mentality to the table, where you play within yourself, you play for the team and you know what you're good at. He's at that stage where he knows who he is and he knows what he needs to do to be effective to help the team."
A projected starter for the 2015-16 season before being injured, Shrigley returned to play in 18 of the team's final 19 games while averaging nearly 12 minutes. The previous season, it was an elbow injury that kept him out of six games. He returned to play in 30 straight contests, finishing second on the team with a career-high 41 three-pointers.
"Honestly, going out (onto the court) now, I don't think about my knee," he said. "I don't wear a brace and I don't think about the fact that I'm not wearing a brace. When my knee is sore, I talk to (athletic trainer Sergio Ibarra) about it. If my knee swells up or if my knee is sore, he knows about it. But I'm healthy."
Giving the Aztecs one more scoring option on a team hardly bereft of scoring options. Shrigley, who redshirted as a freshman in 2011 and has seen ample talent come and go at SDSU, believes the 2016-17 squad may be the most talented yet.
"Honestly, when I look at this team, I see eight guys who could be in the NBA," he said. "That's not something that I could say about teams in the past. Crazy talent. Crazy athletes with crazy abilities. It's just a matter of putting things together and making the pieces fit."
With one of those pieces being a player who scoffed at the skeptics, who debunked the doubters.
"It's actually kind of nice to talk about my injury and get it off my chest," he said. "It was tough to go through that rehab and tough to find my way back. So now that I'm back and I feel good, it's nice to be able to convey the message that it can be done and that it's not the end of a career; it's not the end of the world.
"I've known that I'm not I'm going to have some miraculous $50-million basketball career. I'd love to coach basketball. I would love to teach. I had a lot of great teachers growing up who inspired me to be a better student. At the time, you're never really interested in what they have to say. But they showed me that it wasn't so much about getting good grades, it was about learning and the way you can have an influence on people in different ways.
"If anything, getting injured made me realize how important these years are and how important it was for me to get healthy again. Hurting my knee didn't really put any worry into my mind about what I was going to do (after college). I know I'll be doing something after basketball, and I'll figure it out, but right now I have to focus on staying healthy and getting back on course."