Despite Injuries, It’s Thumbs Up for Gadzuric

The much-watched knees are holding up, but Dan Gadzuric is playing through a different kind of pain, two sore thumbs that, to make things even stranger, were sprained in the same practice about two weeks ago.

The Bruin center, who didn’t have good hands even in healthy moments, said the left hand is worse. He was in obvious pain after coming out in the first half of Sunday’s loss to Syracuse, but eventually played 30 minutes, only the fifth time he has reached that plateau all season, and made seven of nine shots en route to 18 points and 12 rebounds. Eight of the rebounds were offensive.

“It’s hard to know where he’s at in terms of pain, with the knee and the thumb,” Coach Steve Lavin said. “He has a lot of nagging injuries, so they just sort of seem to move around his body.”

*

The 27 points by Jason Kapono in Wednesday’s victory over USC were the most by a Bruin since Kris Johnson had 33 against Arizona State in 1998 and the most by a true freshman since J.R. Henderson had 28 at Washington State in 1995. . . . Syracuse has an all-Southern California starting backcourt: Jason Hart from Inglewood High and Tony Bland from Westchester. Hart had 18 points and seven assists Sunday and Bland missed five of six shots and played only 14 minutes.

UP NEXT

* Thursday at Arizona State, 5:30 PST, Fox Sports Net 2--The Bruins held Sun Devil standout Eddie House to 18 points on five-of-17 shooting in the Jan. 22 game at Pauley Pavilion, but he continues to lead the conference in scoring at 22.9 points a game.