Offseason hip surgery will keep Tommy McMahon on the sideline for the entirety of the upcoming basketball season, he confirmed Friday.
The junior swingman, who underwent the operation over the summer, started 11 of 30 games last year and averaged five points per game. The coaching staff is hopeful that the time off the court will help him shake the injury troubles he's suffered at Penn.
"It's a blow in the sense that Tommy's a talented player," coach Glen Miller said. "But at the same time, he battled through injuries last year, persevered, but he couldn't practice every day and it held him back from being the player that he's capable of being."
McMahon plans to stay at Penn for an extra year, and will apply for an additional season of eligibility when the time comes. If all goes as planned, the junior will play two seasons after sitting this one out.
Until then, staying off the court will be a difficult pill to swallow for a player who has seen significant playing time since the moment he arrived on campus.
"It's the first time since I was 10 years old that I'm not playing basketball in the winter, so it's really weird," he said. "It kind of hit home when they started doing these real practices . I realized how much this is going to suck."
Aside from McMahon's woes, no other player has any significant injuries after the first few practices. A virus that has been going around is the only thing that has kept anyone out of practice thus far.
Captain on deck. No word yet on who the Quakers will name as their official team captain(s), but at least one player is a shoe-in for the job, according to Miller.
"I think it's a no-brainer with Brian [Grandieri]," Miller said of the returning senior who started all but one game last season.
Grandieri is the Quakers' top returning scorer (11.7 ppg), rebounder (5.2 rpg) and ball distributor (83 assists).
"He's embraced that [leadership] role and he's been a terrific leader to this point," Miller said. "He's playing with the same consistency that he did last year."
Back for an encore. Preparation for this season has taken on a decidedly different tenor than it did last season, when Miller had just arrived over the summer to replace the departed Fran Dunphy. With his staff and his system firmly in place, the second-year coach is preparing his troops for a new kind of challenge.
"It's good to have a year under our belt and to have a system in place," he said. "We've got some players coming back with experience in that system, and it's a totally different challenge this year. . This year we're not going to be favored to win the league. We have a lot of unproven players."
That extra season of experience becomes especially crucial when a coach runs what McMahon called "one of the most complex offenses. . We are way, way, way ahead of where we were last year in terms of offense."
Freeway sighting. Saturday's practice included a familiar face, as former player Friedrich Ebede dropped by the Palestra as part of his homecoming visit. Ebede, who graduated in 2006 and played on three league championship teams, is now working in Center City.
Although he was wearing a Barcelona F.C. jersey and loafers rather than his old Quakers uniform, Ebede couldn't resist hoisting up jump shots and shooting the breeze as practice wound down.
