2018 NCAA Tournament: Virginia’s DeAndre Hunter out for season with broken wrist

The University of Virginia announced Tuesday afternoon that redshirt freshman DeAndre Hunter would miss the NCAA tournament due to a broken left wrist. The injury was sustained during last week’s ACC tournament and will require surgery. Hunter will have surgery Monday, March 19 to repair the damage.

This is a huge blow to the Cavaliers who, just Sunday, were announced the No. 1 overall seed for the tournament for the first time in school history. Hunter was the ACC’s Sixth Man of the Year, averaging 9.2 points and 3.3 rebounds off the bench. He played in all 33 games for the Hoos and was a huge asset on both sides of the ball.

Hunter was fourth in scoring on the team behind Kyle Guy, Devon Hall, and Ty Jerome. The Hoos will need Mamadi Diakite to potentially step up, and in case of troublesome depth issues could look at moving Hall into a functioning forward (or 4) role and use Nigel Johnson off the bench at guard. Diakite has improved over the back end of the season and will be crucial to pick up slack. Coach Bennett also has reserves Marco Anthony and Jay Huff at his disposal on the bench.

Virginia opens tournament play against 16-seed UMBC on Friday night at 9:20 pm in Charlotte, NC. If they win, they’ll face the winner of 8-seed Creighton and 9-seed Kansas State.

His teammate Kyle Guy took to Twitter to express his support for Hunter and let Wahoo fans they won’t let this slow them down.

The full release from Virginia Sports can be found here.