How Iowa's Jordan Bohannon spent his summer vacation: Rehabbing

Jordan Bohannon looked a bit heavier Wednesday than his playing weight last season for the Iowa men's basketball team, and it wasn't just because he now has a fairly thick beard.

You'd have picked up a pound or two, too, if you spent a couple of weeks off your feet and then eased back toward your normal program as a major-college athlete.

It wasn't the easiest winter, or spring, or summer for Bohannon, a senior guard. He played last season with an aching hip, courtesy of a fall he suffered shortly near the start of the season. He missed Iowa's exhibition game, but started all 35 games that counted and averaged 11.6 points and 3.4 assists for the 23-12 Hawkeyes.

'I knew something wasn't right,' Bohannon said Wednesday at his team's media day. 'Being who I am, I never said anything to the trainer or coach.

'I just kept playing to see if it got any better. I got through the nonconference play. It was all right going forward. I think it was at Ohio State (in late February) I fell on it pretty badly. That's kind of the first time I mentioned something to Brad (trainer Brad Floy). He did some injections throughout the season after that.

'I told him after the (season-ending) Tennessee game 'Brad, it's not getting better. It's been getting a lot worse.' We tried a cortisone shot and it was pretty much my last straw.

Bohannon had an operation in late May to repair a labral tear and shave some bone off his right hip.

'It was a painful season,' he said. 'When you get out on the court you don't really feel much because of the adrenaline going through your body. I did everything I could. I know I left it all out there that I had in my body.'

He said 'I probably took a little more ibuprofen than I should have after games and before games. Brad probably wasn't too happy with me. It got me through it and that's all I was trying to do, get through the season and not show as much symptoms or body language as possible.

'Brad did a great job with me. You've got to give him a lot of props for getting me through that. The stuff he was able to do with me, doing injections before games. Even though I didn't want to do them, he talked me into them because it would help me out. It did help me out going forward. Without him I definitely wouldn't be able to get through that season.'

After his surgery, Bohannon was bedridden for two weeks, then eased into walking. He has been at practice since it began a week-and-a-half-ago, but only to shoot and run on his own.

'It was a long process,' he said. 'That took a toll on me mentally, but I'm still trying if I can get back for the first game (November 8).'

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