Phil Martelli provides update on injury status of Jett Howard, Terrance Williams

Prior to Michigan‘s Thursday night road matchup with Rutgers, associate head coach Phil Martelli gave some key injury updates. Starting with the status of star freshman Jett Howard, who left the team’s previous game versus Michigan State with a lower-body injury.

“He’s upright, his movement has improved each day so we were off Sunday, Monday a lot of treatment, engagement obviously in scouting report via film, and then the same with yesterday,” Martelli said. “I will say this, his body language is much brighter than other times when he’s been injured. But still, nothing where you’d say oh yeah well he’s full go or anything like that, not ready for that yet.”

Martelli also confirmed that Howard will be traveling with the team, and detailed the location of the injury he suffered the best he could.

“Hopefully with uniform, that’s what I’ll say. He’s making the trip with uniform, not with sweatsuit,” Martelli said. “It was not his knee and Andrew my caught pauses, not being medical, despite my four Ph.D.’s I am not medical. So if you said to me is it his foot or his ankle, I don’t know that, but it’s not his knee.”

Howard is the team’s second-leading scorer, averaging 14.4 points per game for the Wolverines. He missed one game this season already after suffering an injury to his opposite ankle against Minnesota.

Starting center Terrance Williams has also been battling injury, missing the Wolverines’ last two games after suffering a knee contusion. Martelli also gave an update on Williams, who like Howard, has started in every game he’s appeared in this season.

“He was able to go lightly on Monday and he was a full participant yesterday and I guess some of it will be how he reacts today. We moved practice up a little bit because of this impending weather so I’ve not seen the status report. We usually get a status report before we draft up our practice plan, we get a status report but I haven’t seen our report yet for this morning,” Martelli said.

Williams’ status for Thursday’s game is unclear, but freshman Will Tschetter has been starting in his place in Michigan’s last two games.

The absence of Howard and Williams would be a big blow for Michigan, having to potentially replace two players in their starting lineup. The Scarlet Knights enter the matchup as six-point home favorites, and hopefully the Wolverines can hold up with whoever is able to suit up for them on Thursday.