March Madness: Vermont’s TJ Long suffers brutal knee injury late in loss to Duke

After an exciting 28-win season, the Vermont Catamounts reached the first round of the NCAA Tournament as the 13th seed. This drew a tough matchup with the four-seed Duke Blue Devils. But for TJ Long, it was a chance to play in his home state of New York at the Barclays Center.

Despite being Vermont’s leading scorer, the sophomore guard had a tough time adjusting to Duke’s defense in the 64-47 loss, but that was just the start of the nightmare.

With just over 90 seconds remaining, Long, No. 20, suffered a sudden knee injury and collapsed to the court, where he stayed for several moments writhing in pain

tj long injures himself on the fastbreak, prayers pic.twitter.com/6lV60TyZOU

— ◇ (@2MANYBRIDGES) March 23, 2024

There’s no word on the severity of Long’s setback, but so far, Vermont coach John Becker says the ‘hope is’ he avoided a ‘catastrophic’ knee injury. However, they’ll need to wait for imaging to know more. Long left the locker room on crutches.

Some potentially hopeful news: Vermont coach John Becker tells me that the initial hope is that TJ Long didn’t suffer a catastrophic injury to his knee. But he’ll still need imaging to confirm. Long left the locker room on crutches.

— Matt Norlander (@MattNorlander) March 23, 2024

He finished with three points after shooting 1-for-8 from the field, four rebounds, three assists, and a steal.

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