Injury Report: A set back’Arkansas Two stars players suffer seriously injury

Arkansas basketball guard Tramon Mark had to be stretchered off the court due to a back injury after a hard fall in the second half of the Razorbacks’ 87-72 loss against North Carolina in the Battle 4 Atlantis in the Bahamas.

Mark took a tough spill in the paint after driving hard to the rim, landing on his back and remaining on the floor with no movement in his lower body for nearly five minutes. He was released from a local hospital after an MRI showed no significant damage to his back. After the game, coach Eric Musselman confirmed that Mark had suffered a back injury after the fall.

“It’s his back,” Musselman said. “Not his neck or head.”

The 6-foot-6 junior kept his team afloat throughout the game against the Tar Heels, finishing with 34 points on just 17 shots, connecting on 4 of 6 six 3-point attempts. Arkansas’ second-highest scorer in the game was guard Layden Blocker, who finished with 11 points. Mark will travel back to Fayetteville with the team on Saturday morning.

Mark has appeared in all seven of Arkansas’ games this season, averaging a career-high 15.8 points coming into the game against North Carolina. The one-two punch of Mark and guard Khalif Battle led Arkansas to winning four of its first five games of the season, but have dropped the last two matchups to Memphis and North Carolina.

After a scary fall late in the second half against North Carolina in the Battle 4 Atlantis, Mark suffered a back injury, confirmed by Musselman after the game.

Musselman did not get into the specifics of the injury, but simply said that Mark had sustained a back injury rather, than to his arm to his head or neck.

Arkansas football provided an injury update after the game, stating that the junior has been released from the local hospital after an MRI showed no significant damage to his back. He will travel with the team back to Fayetteville on Saturday morning.

Arkansas may have secured its first conference victory with a 39-36 victory at Florida over the weekend, but it came at the cost of losing some significant contributors for this Saturday’s matchup against Auburn in Fayetteville.

After going down with an upper extremity injury during the first offensive drive of the game, redshirt freshman tight end Ty Washington never returned to the game. Head coach Sam Pittman said after the contest that he didn’t know if Washington would be back this year, and it sounds like he was right.

“Tyrus, he has a dislocated shoulder,” Pittman said Monday. “Probably will involve some surgery. So, he will be out. We’re going to move Hunter Talley up. We’ve got some opportunities with (Shamar) Easter and (Maddox) Lassiter. I just think in this short period of time, Hunter Talley knows the offense better than the other fellas do, and he’s really looked good on the scout team as well. So, we’ll move him up to be No. 4 there.”

Arkansas is already without freshman Luke Hasz, who caught 16 passes for 253 yards and three touchdowns in the team’s first five games before he broke his clavicle on Sept. 30. Washington stepped up the next week by catching seven passes for 90 yards and two scores at Ole Miss, and he’s caught four passes for 80 yards since.

Ahead of Talley — a walk-on — on the depth chart is super senior Nathan Bax as the starter, North Texas transfer Var’keyes Gumms as the second-teamer and Louisville transfer Francis Sherman as the third-teamer.

Also suffering an injury against the Gators was sophomore right tackle Patrick Kutas, who has started every game for the Hogs this season. The native of Memphis suffered a high ankle sprain after playing just 25 snaps at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium in Gainesville, Florida.

“I don’t know if we’re going to get him back this week,” Pittman said. “He’s got a high ankle, so I just don’t know. From what I understand, depending on how high it is depends on the weeks. It’s not an extremely high injury.”

Senior Ty’Kieast Crawford filled in for Kutas against Florida, and he earned a 59.6 overall grade from Pro Football Focus across 58 snaps.

“Ty’kieast Crawford brought some juice, too,” Pittman said. “I was really pleased and excited for Ty’kieast. We’ll let them battle it out this week, but I would anticipate Ty’kieast being over there at the right side because he earned that. He played well.”

Crawford’s 72.3 pass block grade was the second best on the team, just behind SEC Offensive Lineman of the Week Beaux Limmer, who earned a 72.6 at the center position.

“He was really good in pass protection — really good,” Pittman said of Crawford. “They were trying to bull him quite a bit because he’s so athletic that he was out on top of them. They tried to bull him, he set the bull down real nice. I was just… I thought he brought a lot of energy to the offense.”

One of the more scary looking injuries came when wide receiver Andrew Armstrong laid out for a ball thrown by fellow receiver Isaac TeSlaa early in the fourth quarter. Armstrong hit his head on the ground violently, but was able to walk back to the locker room under his own power, and he even tweeted after the game that he was great.

“Armstrong, I think, is going to be just fine,” Pittman said. “We’ll know a little bit more at practice today whether he’s cleared from his headache. But I think he’s going to be fine.”

Defensive tackle Anthony “Tank” Booker Jr. also went down with a lower leg injury at Florida, but he should be okay.

“Had an ankle, but I think he’s going to be fine,” Pittman said. “He may not practice today or limited, but I tell you what now, that’s the guy we went out and tried to get Saturday. He was really good.

“Our linebackers, we gotta tackle better on defense. We gotta tackle better. But our linebackers basically ran free all day because of that D-line. We made a lot tackles, we missed a lot of them. We’ve got to emphasize that.”

Arkansas and Auburn will face off at Reynolds Razorback Stadium at 3 p.m. CT on Saturday. The game will be broadcast on the SEC Network.