Poke-ing Around: Penn and other items
By John Helsley
jhelsley@opubco.com
Ray Penn remains questionable — “day-to-day” according to Travis Ford — as Oklahoma State approaches Wednesday night’ s home game against Texas A&M.
Get used to it, Cowboys fans, as the freshman point guard’s status may not differ much the rest of the season, as Ford and the OSU trainers don’t want a sore knee to transition into something much worse.
Penn was on crutches again Monday (as a precaution and to relieve weight on the knee), when he did not practice.
Ford said the decision to play or rest Penn will be multi-layered.
“It’s up to (Penn),” Ford said. “Up to the trainers. Speaking with the trainers and everybody, this is a situation we’re going to have to monitor. It’s unfortunate he’s not going to get to practice as much as we’d like. We’ll try to save him for games as much as possible. And that’s never a good scenario, especially for a freshman. If he was an older player, you’d feel a little better about it. But freshmen need as much practice time as possible.
“Hopefully, he can continue to heal and still be able to play a little bit and practice a little bit.
“It’s kind of been a strange deal, the whole thing, where it’s at. It’s not real, real bad, but it’s a thing that can get worse. So it’s a very fine line you have to walk. A very fine line.”
Playing the bulk of the minutes at the point in place of Penn, Keiton Page didn’t produce a great stat line, yet managed the offense, which was pleasing to Ford.
“He did good. What I liked about Keiton, I thought he did a great job of getting leadership out of the point guard spot. We saw many clips where he’s pointing and directing and he’s trying to get guys in the right direction, while they double-teamed him a lot and beat him up pretty good. He got hit in the eye with the ball one time. He got slapped in the eye one time. All accidental.
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