Greg Oden will miss the beginning of college basketball season if his rehabilitation from wrist surgery takes as long as expected.

Greg Oden’s father, Greg Oden Sr., said his son told him prior to Friday’s procedure that doctors thought rehabilitation would take six months.
“That’s what they told him, six months,” Greg Oden Sr. said this weekend. “I haven’t talked to him since the surgery, so I don’t know what’s going to happen with rehab and all of that. But they said six months.”

Greg Oden, a two-time national Player of the Year from Lawrence North, had surgery at the Indiana Hand Center to repair a torn ligament in his right wrist. Afterward, Lawrence North coach Jack Keefer said doctors inserted a clamp and a screw into Greg Oden’s wrist. Keefer said doctors likened the surgery to repairing a torn anterior cruciate ligament in a knee and termed the procedure “a success.”

“It’s not something that’s going to take a few weeks or a couple months,” Keefer said.

Neither Greg Oden nor his mother, Zoe, have talked publicly since the surgery. The doctors involved are prohibited by law from commenting without family consent.

Greg Oden was scheduled to begin classes on today at Ohio State. Buckeyes coach Thad Matta, who was in Indianapolis Friday for Greg Oden’s surgery, has not commented on his star recruit’s recovery.

Ohio State spokesman Dan Wallenberg said Greg Oden saw Buckeyes team doctor Grant Jones on Monday. Greg Oden will see Jones once a week, but “his main evaluation is going to be once a month,” Wallenberg said.

Greg Oden was scheduled to play with USA Basketball’s senior men’s team, from which the 2008 Olympic team will be chosen, in Las Vegas in late July. Though it’s almost certain Greg Oden won’t be able to play, USA Basketball spokesman Craig Miller said Greg Oden may still make the trip to attend meetings, meet Olympic coach Mike Krzyzewski spend time with USA men’s basketball director Jerry Colangelo.

A six-month layoff would put Greg Oden back in action Dec. 16. Ohio State hasn’t released its full schedule, but that would include the marquee game of the Big Ten-ACC Challenge, Nov. 29 against North Carolina, which pits the nation’s top two rated recruiting classes.

Should Greg Oden play, the game would also be a rematch of a nationally televised high school game between Tyler Hansbrough, last year’s national freshman of the year with the Tar Heels, and Greg Oden.

Lawrence North beat Hansbrough’s Poplar Bluff (Mo.) team 56-40 Dec. 9, 2004, at Hinkle Fieldhouse. A junior at the time, Greg Oden had 16 points, five rebounds and two blocked shots. Hansbrough, a senior, had 16, 12 and one.

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