Injury report: Juju McDowell to miss remainder of spring practice
South Carolina senior running back Juju McDowell is dealing with a collarbone injury and will miss the remainder of spring practice, Gamecocks head coach Shane Beamer said Tuesday during his weekly press conference.
“Really the only new addition (to the injury report) would be Juju McDowell,” Beamer said. “He will be done for the spring. It’s nothing long-term. It was something, a collarbone that’s been bothering him a little bit that he fell on, not in a contact drill, but diving for a ball to catch a pass and kind of came down the wrong way.”
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McDowell has appeared in 35 games over the past three seasons with five starts. Last season, McDowell appeared in 10 games with one start but missed the final two games of the regular season following a season-ending injury against Vanderbilt
McDowell, who rushed 26 times for 63 yards and two touchdowns last year, had returned from that injury but now will miss the spring with the latest setback.
“It was a situation where we said, do we want to continue to have this thing nagging and be an issue or do we want to go ahead and get it fixed? And he and all of us agreed, let’s just go ahead and get it fixed where it’s not an issue going forward. So he will have a procedure done. We’re going to get that mended up. And he’s not excited about it, but that’s what he wants to do. And he’ll be good to go here shortly. Won’t be able to do anything else the rest of practice. But he’s a guy, he’s played a lot of football around here, and we know what he can do.”
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Beamer previously indicated that running back Rocket Sanders, linebacker Mo Kaba and redshirt freshman wide receiver C.J. Adams will likely miss all 15 practices of the spring.
Sanders, the former All-SEC transfer from Arkansas, is still recovering from offseason shoulder surgery while Kaba is still recovering from knee surgery after suffering a torn ACL in the season opener last year.
Adams suffered what Beamer called “a little bit of a spring break injury” to his finger.
Walk-on offensive linemen Jaxon Hughes and Chase Sweigart are also still out with undisclosed injuries, though Beamer said last week the hope is they’ll be back in the next couple of weeks.
The Gamecocks completed their fourth practice of the spring on Tuesday morning.
