North Carolina center Henri Veesaar went from barely practicing or working out due to a nagging lower-body injury to playing nearly a full amount of minutes in his return to action at Syracuse.
“It feels great, it feels a lot better than before,” the 7-footer said after posting 19 points and three blocks in Saturday's 77-64 road win.
The 16th-ranked Tar Heels desperately need to keep things that way, too.
The junior had missed two straight games along with freshman star Caleb Wilson, who is out indefinitely with a broken hand and is due to be re-evaluated next week. The uncertainty surrounding both had threatened to derail a season that was coming off a last-second victory against rival Duke two weeks ago.
Veesaar's return was a stabilizing step with No. 21 Louisville set to visit Chapel Hill on Monday night.
“It's easier because he's a guy who can score consistently in the paint,” UNC coach Hubert Davis said. “He can shoot from 3. He can pass. And there are a lot of [defensive] attention on him.”
Veesaar saw 25:58 of game action, “a little more than I wanted to play against him,” Davis added. “But he kept saying he felt good. It was good to have him back in the lineup.”
Veesaar entered as the team's second-leading scorer (16.4) and rebounder (9.0), forming a powerful tandem in the frontcourt with Wilson as the leader in both categories and a high-level NBA prospect. But things had gone wrong for the Tar Heels since the Duke thriller, first when Wilson suffered his injury in the first half of a Feb. 10 loss at Miami.
Then Veesaar suddenly appeared with an illness and what was described only as a “lower extremity” injury. He missed last weekend's home win against a Pittsburgh team near the bottom of the Atlantic Coast Conference standings.
He recovered from the illness but was still out for Tuesday's loss at NC State, with UNC falling by 24 for its most lopsided loss in the long-running rivalry since 1962.
“I feel like it was kind of annoying and then it built on that,” Veesaar said. “After Miami, everything clicked in that game and I was able to get through it. But then I felt like we needed to take a little time off to get back to the way I need to play and be able to play at 100%.”
His first running drills came on Wednesday. He did more individual work on Thursday. Davis then said Friday that Veesaar would hold a limited team practice, though he called it questionable for the Orange.
Davis wanted to see how Veesaar responded throughout the night and then during warmups. Veesaar finally started as he had in his previous 24 games, finishing 9 of 13 from the field with a three-pointer and three rebounds while being within range of his typical 31-minute average.
“I felt good, it didn't hurt at all,” he said. “So just being able to do that gave me confidence to play today.”
