Payne feels better, return still uncertain

Iowa men's basketball coach Fran McCaffery said Cully Payne feels much better two weeks removed from surgery but it's undetermined when - or if - the sophomore point guard will be able to return this season.

Payne, a co-captain from Schaumburg, Ill., had surgery Nov. 30 to repair a sports hernia and torn oblique.

“I think it's a little too early to tell (when Payne will return), but he feels a lot better,” McCaffery said Monday morning. “That's typically what happens with this type of surgery. I was a little concerned because he had the hernia and the torn oblique, so I thought it might be problematic for him. But he's in great shape and he was in a lot of pain the first seven or eight days, which you can imagine.”

Payne started his first 37 games at Iowa, including all 32 last year. He was named to the Big Ten's all-freshman team and averaged 8.7 points and 3.8 assists a game. This year he had 19 points and 17 assists in five games before electing for surgery.

McCaffery said Payne's likely return is somewhere between four and eight weeks.

“That's a big difference especially when you're right in the middle of the season, but we'll see how it goes,” McCaffery said. “It might be four, it might be eight. It'll probably be somewhere in between.”

Payne started attending practice within days of the surgery. It's possible Payne could red-shirt this season if his return is closer to eight weeks away.

“I'll look at how many games he'll have left and that type of thing,” McCaffery said. “We'll make a determination at that time.”