There are four players who have been unavailable for Utah State men’s basketball in its first three games of the season: centers Connor Turnbull and Collin Mulholland, forward Bron Roberts, and guard Jax Allen. The absence of these four players hasn’t been a hindrance to the Aggies so far, who have soared to a 3-0 start with blowout wins over Idaho State (94-58), Omaha (90-56) and Utah Tech (118-86). But it’s worth keeping up-to-date on their status, as several of these players would be in Utah State’s rotation were it not for injuries.
Each of the four has varied injuries or situations that will keep them out either for days, weeks, months, or, in one case, the entire season. Here are the latest updates for each player.
Starting with Turnbull, he is the most notable among the currently absent players. Turnbull is the team’s starting center and played in all three of the team’s exhibition games. Across those three contests, he averaged 10.3 points and 6.0 rebounds in only 15.3 minutes per game. The 6-foot-11 senior provided size for the Aggies and their best rim protection.
But after practicing throughout the summer with no major hiccups and playing in all of the exhibitions, Turnbull showed up for the first game of the season with crutches and a medical boot on his right foot. The injury that put Turnbull in that boot happened less than 48 hours before the season opener, according to Head Coach Ben Jacobson. And the timeline for Turnbull’s return that Jacobson gave back on Nov. 2 was 2-3 weeks. On Monday, Jacobson was asked for an update.
“A week from today, he will get checked again. That will tell us a lot,” Jacobson said. “This past week has gone well. Now, he didn’t do anything, and he was on the crutches and had the boot on. But it was a good week for him, it sounds like after him talking with (the doctor) this morning. So no real updates, no real changes, but there wasn’t going to be in that first week.”
Based on the initial timeline given, Turnbull could return right before Utah State travels to play in the Acrisure Classic, where the Aggies will face SMU and No. 21 USC.
Mulholland was able to practice some during the offseason, but missed just about all of fall camp with multiple injuries. He didn’t participate in any of the preseason exhibitions, and his timeline is a lot more vague, as Jacobson hasn’t provided a clear answer to when Mulholland will return. What we do know is that “Big Maple” is actively working his way through the return-to-play process. As outlined by Jacobson, that includes going through non-contact drills, then partial contact, and finally full contact and five-on-five.
As of now, Mulholland is going through at least the first stage of that process. In the two most recent games, he’s participated in the initial pregame warmups with the rest of his teammates. But when the teams go to the locker room before coming back onto the court for the second round of warmups, Mulholland has changed back into street clothes on each occasion.
“He feels good. He’s just been out of practice for a long time,” Jacobson said of Mulholland after the Aggies’ game against Omaha. “We’ll get a little bit of contact with one-on-one, individual workout stuff. Get into non-contact practice stuff this week.”
The final absent big for Utah State, sophomore Bron Roberts, has been a fully expected long-term absence. He injured his ACL in a February game while playing for Snow College and is progressing in his rehab. Utah State’s coaching staff knew of the injury when they recruited and signed Roberts, knowing full well he wasn’t likely to play this season. There is a chance Roberts could see the floor, as the new five-for-five eligibility rules have done away with injury exemptions. So if Roberts is cleared to play late in the season, he might log a few minutes.
Allen’s situation is the only one that is definitive. Utah State announced on Saturday that the freshman guard will redshirt this upcoming season. Why Allen is using a redshirt when the new era of five-for-five eligibility is essentially doing away with the redshirt season is a complicated web. The first key is that Allen has the choice to have the old five-years-to-play-four-seasons rule apply, or the new five-for-five model. The reason why he would choose the old model has to do with how the NCAA would apply each set of rules to Allen’s situation. Under the new rules, Allen would exhaust his eligibility after the 2031 fall semester, essentially in the middle of the 2031-32 basketball season. But by utilizing the old model, Allen’s eligibility would last through the end of the ’31-32 campaign.
Exactly why the rules apply that way is not a simple explanation, but it essentially has to do with the timing of when Allen returned from his church mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Allen returned this past winter and spent the spring semester as an informal participant in workouts with the Snow College men’s basketball team. There has been some speculation that his time at Snow College impacts Allen’s eligibility, but he was never an official member of the team.
