Just a day after he was seen at practice with no knee brace seemingly back to being fully healthy, more bad news hit for Robby Carmody and the Notre Dame men's Basketball program. Earlier this morning Tom Noie reported that the Notre Dame guard will undergo surgery on a broken kneecap and will be sidelined until at least December. The Mars, PA native seems like he can't catch a break as he was rehabbing from a torn ACL this offseason and missed the majority of his freshman year with a torn labrum.
Carmody is a former top 100 recruit who averaged over 30 points a game in high school and was thought of as potentially the best player in Notre Dame's 2018 recruiting class. After two tough years this was supposed to be Carmody's year but now he is back to square one. For the guard it isn't as simple as a December return, Carmody is a player who relies heavily on his athleticism and will have to ease back into things to hope to get it back. When he returns the guard's game could look very different than it did when we last saw him in 2019, maybe he could take the role Rex Pflueger left as a guy who does all the little things right, or we could see him attack the basket less. Regardless it is far fetched to say that when the rising Junior returns he will be the same player at least immediately. The good thing is that Carmody has 4 years of eligibility left so he will have time to get his game back if he can stay healthy.
As for the team without Carmody things get awfully thin without him there. The explosive athlete was supposed to come off the bench as the 6th man, Nik Djogo will surely take his spot there but the overall depth of this team is now in question. After Djogo there are still one or two spots in the rotation that need to be filled and the guys competing to fill them consist of three freshmen in Elijah Taylor, Tony Sanders, and Matt Zona along with Walk On Elijah Morgan. While we could be ok with this lack of experience in most non conference games (maybe not Purdue or Kentucky) it's gonna be really hard to win conference games with that little depth.
It's been a rough few days for the Notre Dame men's basketball program but the season is fast approaching and if the Irish can win a few non-conference games there could be reason for optimism going into conference play.
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