Gophers leading rusher Trey Potts will miss the rest of the college football season as he recovers from a health scare stemming from Minnesota’s Oct. 2 win at Purdue.
Speaking Monday, head coach P.J. Fleck said Potts “is going to be OK,” but added he won’t be able to return to the field due to the undisclosed injury.
“He’s out of the hospital. He’s back in Minnesota,” said Fleck. “It’s unfortunate what happened and really scary what happened.”
Fleck continued: “Do I expect him to play the rest of the year? No. I’m not going to get into the extent of his injury. That’s up for him and his family to be able to talk about that if they want to do that. I keep that as a personal side for the players.”
Potts, who took over the lead back role after Mohamed Ibrahim’s season-ending injury against Ohio State, left in the fourth quarter of the Purdue game and did not return, with some fans in attendance saying they saw him being placed on a stretcher and taken to an ambulance.
The Gophers announced two days later that Potts had been hospitalized in Indiana and didn’t return to Minnesota with the team. The Pioneer Press described Potts’ injury as an “upper-body ailment” that kept him in an Indiana hospital for six nights.
“I’m really, really thankful for the medical people that we have,” said Fleck. “All the people that were there to help treat him the way he needed to be treated.”
Without Potts, the Gophers could choose to give true freshman Mar’Keise “Bucky” Irving the lead back role. Minnesota hosts Nebraska at 11 a.m. Saturday.
