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Some sad news is coming out of Eugene. Oregon has lost star big man Chris Boucher to a torn ACL, which he suffered in the first half of Friday's semifinal against California, according to Scout.com’s Evan Daniels.
It’s unclear when the injury occurred, as Boucher played and finished the game with 10 points, three boards and two blocked shots.
The senior big man averaged 11.8 points, 6.1 rebounds and 2.5 blocks per game this season. He broke the school’s single-season shot blocks record.
This is terrible news for Boucher, who now ends his college career on the sideline with his team in contention for a national title. What makes this even more brutal is it comes right before Selection Sunday, and the selection committee has shown they’ll penalize teams who lose key players to injury.
That probably means Oregon is out of contention for a 1 seed, even if they beat Arizona in the Pac-12 championship, but hopefully that’s not the case. Even though we all want to see Kentucky get a 1 seed, you don’t want to see Oregon lose it because of this and add insult to Boucher’s injury.