Wichita State’s Landry Shamet says surgery likely on Wednesday for foot injury

Wichita State freshman guard Landry Shamet is on crutches. Senior Fred VanVleet is jogging and shooting at a careful pace. Neither will play this week in the AdvoCare Invitational, putting Wichita State’s backcourt depth to the test.

Shamet said he will likely have surgery on Wednesday to repair a stress fracture in the fifth metatarsal in his left foot. Until surgery is complete, he called it premature to speculate about a timetable for a return.

“We won’t know until the surgery and we see how that goes,” Shamet said. “Hopefully, it will be a quick recovery, but we’ll see. I’ve never really had an injury before, so I don’t have anything to base it on.”

WSU coach Gregg Marshall, on his radio show Monday, said he expected Shamet to miss 10 to 12 weeks. He compared Shamet’s injury to a stress fracture in senior Ron Baker’s left foot that sidelined him from Dec. 13 to March 8 during the 2012-13 season. Baker did not have surgery.

“It’s very similar to what Ron Baker went through as a freshman and that turned out OK,” Marshall said. “But it’s not easy for Landry. He obviously was playing pretty well. He was one of the freshmen that looked like he belonged.”

Shamet, from Kansas City, Mo., averaged 8.7 points and 2.7 rebounds in WSU’s first three games. He played 19.7 minutes, second among Shocker newcomers. Marshall said Shamet began complaining of pain on the outside of his foot late last week.

No. 20 WSU travels to Orlando, Fla., on Thursday to play Southern Cal in the Advocare Invitational. Shamet’s injury further weakens a backcourt already without senior guard Fred VanVleet. He did not play Saturday against Emporia State, due to a strained left hamstring, and is not expected to play this week.

“The consensus is it would be more a reasonable gameplan to wait until the Saint Louis game (Dec. 5),” VanVleet said. “I think everybody feels like playing this weekend would be pushing it, even if I were feeling good. I’m just going to give it some extra time.”

VanVleet didn’t practice Monday, but he did perform stretching and light jogging and dribbling.

“It’s not an extremely excruciating painful thing, more of a nagging,” he said. “I feel fine, I feel like I can run, but knowing that I’m not 100 percent — It’s more mental for me than anything, having to be patient and sit out when I want to be out there.”

Worth noting — WSU dropped 11 spots to No. 20 in Monday’s Associated Press and USA Today coaches polls … Marshall said WSU has not decided on a holiday tournament for the 2018-19 season. The Shockers play in the Battle 4 Atlantis next season and the Maui Invitational during the 2017-18 season. Schools can play in multi-team tournaments once every four seasons, which means WSU would be eligible for a return in 2018 for the CBE Classic in Kansas City and the Puerto Rico Tip-Off, past destinations, among others. Marshall said he preferred Thanksgiving tournaments and would likely not schedule another trip around Christmas.

This story was originally published November 23, 2015 at 11:25 AM with the headline "Wichita State’s Landry Shamet says surgery likely on Wednesday for foot injury."