MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- Kenyon Martin heard the pop as he attempted to pivot on his right leg. As Cincinnati trainer Jayd Grossman approached him, Martin told him he was sure the ankle was broken.
It was. First, the ligament between his tibula and fibula bones had snapped, and then the fibula was fractured. Along with -- almost certainly -- the top-ranked Bearcats' hopes of a national championship.
It happened with no warning, three minutes into Cincinnati's quarterfinal game yesterday with Saint Louis in the Conference USA tournament. His leg was placed in an air cast and he was taken for X-rays to Campbell's Clinic.
Martin, the Conference USA Player of the Year and yesterday named to the U.S. Basketball Writers Association's All-America first team, returned to the Pyramid midway through the second half on crutches, with the leg in a cast below the knee. And he sat behind Cincinnati's bench, trying to coax his teammates to victory. It did no good. Without the league's best player, the depressed Bearcats -- undefeated in the league during the regular season -- fell to the Billikens, 68-58.
"I was going to set a down-screen for DerMarr [Johnson] and I felt it pop," Martin said after the game, his leg propped on a blue folding chair. "I knew it was broken; I didn't have control over it."
Surgery will be scheduled back in Cincinnati. But it was obvious that the pain brought by the abrupt end of his college career was more intense than that in his ankle.
"I'll be there with them no matter what they do, no matter where they go," Martin said of his teammates.
Bearcats coach Bob Huggins said, "We're going to give it a go. It's a traumatic thing to go through. He means so much in so many ways.
"What you have to appreciate about Kenyon is that it's all about the team. It's always the team. He kept saying, `We worked so hard, we worked so hard.'"
Martin is expected to make a total recovery and could be running again in 2 1/2 to 3 months. Which means his NBA lottery status -- he will be among the first players taken -- may only be marginally affected. But more immediately, Cincinnati must go on.
"Everything changes without him," Huggins said. "The biggest thing missing without Kenyon was when guys were in the wrong place, he would put them in the right spot. He conceptualizes the game so well."
