Xavier coach Sean Miller on 'devastating' Zach Freemantle injury
There was a stunned silence in Cintas Center Monday.
Xavier had less than 48 hours to brush off a brutal loss to Cincinnati in the Skyline Chili Crosstown Shootout when its worst nightmare came true. Forward Zach Freemantle, the Musketeers' leading scorer and rebounder, would be out indefinitely with a lower-body injury.
Xavier head coach Sean Miller was speechless.
"I didn't know what to say to him. Quite frankly, I don't really think he knew what to say to me," Miller said Wednesday in his postgame press conference in Hartford. "It's heartbreaking. It's devastating. You always say things can be worse, but this kid has done things that I've never seen before in sports."
A year ago, Freemantle was on the mend while Xavier endured its first losing season in nearly 30 years. He was always around Cintas Center, frequently dribbling a basketball while limited to a scooter after a second foot surgery in six months.
"It gets pretty dark," Freemantle told The Enquirer at Madison Square Garden during Big East Media Day.
Over the last three seasons, Freemantle had missed 55 of Xavier's 107 games. Each time another injury arrived, Freemantle took it in stride and kept grinding to get back on the court. This offseason was no different.
"Really getting himself into world-class shape," said Miller, who added that Freemantle has 4% body fat. "He's our hardest worker."
When Freemantle announced in April that he'd use his extra year of eligibility to return to Xavier, it was viewed as a running leap in the right direction for a program that got little production down low without him.
For 11 games, Freemantle was the answer. Freemantle was playing some of the best basketball of his career on both sides of the ball on top of providing veteran leadership to a new-look roster. Freemantle was averaging 16.9 points and 7.7 rebounds per game as an undersized center − a challenge he took head-on after Xavier lost Lassina Traore to a torn ACL in October.
"You just said, 'This is gonna be the year. He's gonna be healthy from start to finish,'" Miller said. "Then this happens."
Sean Miller on Zach Freemantle: 'He's gotta fight the good fight here'
Freemantle is a college basketball unicorn in more ways than one. On top of countless comeback trails, Freemantle never strayed from the school that recruited him as a four-star forward from New Jersey in the Class of 2019. A rarity in an era of college basketball defined by NIL and the transfer portal.
"He had never entered the transfer portal. He just stayed with Xavier, graduated from grad school, loves the Big East, loves college basketball," Miller said.
While Freemantle's injury obviously impacts Xavier in a lot of ways on the court, Miller's main focus is on his fallen star.
"To go through this once can really take an athlete into a dark place. To go through it four times, that's a completely different situation," Miller said. "We're surrounding him with a lot of camaraderie. I bet on his end he's like, 'hey, thank you.' He's gotta fight the good fight here."
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