Jermain Ousley’s Aching Back

The Tigers’ season depends somewhat on their junior center’s physical condition.

by Gary Parrish

he second the alarm clock goes off and Jermaine Ousley rolls out of bed, he can tell if it’s going to be a good day.
A good day for Ousley is one where he can walk the campus of the University of Memphis and play basketball for the Tigers without pain. The problem is he never knows when those days will come and go.
Ousley, a 6-8 forward who transferred to Memphis from Tyler (Texas) Junior College, has played the first four games of the season with what he calls a “bulging disc” in his back. University of Memphis basketball trainer Ray Burr calls Ousley’s injury a “lower back strain.” They could be one and the same. Ousley’s back injury dates back to his junior-college days and will probably continue to be a chronic problem until at least after the season is complete and the proper treatment can be given.

PHOTO BY DAVID SOWELL

Jermaine Ousley: Good days and not-so-good days.

“It’s spasms, with a strike of pain,” Ousley says with a grimacing look on his face as he describes what his back feels like on a bad day. “Other days it just throbs. I just try not to think about it too much.”
Where or how the injury originated is not certain. Ousley says it was not one single incident, although he does recall a time when he landed flat on his back after a dunk last year at Tyler. And even though he doesn’t think that’s where the back problem originated, he does remember exactly when it became a concern.
“We went to a tournament in Grayson, Texas,” he explains. “That’s when I first started having really bad back problems. One day I woke up, and it was just hurting me. It got so bad at one point that I couldn’t even walk. I had to have the team carry me.”
Ousley, who was named preseason junior-college player of the year by Dick Vitale’s College Basketball magazine, only missed two games last year due to the injury. Both Ousley and his junior-college coach, current Memphis assistant Fred Rike, insist Ousley did not come back too soon from the injury.
“Jermaine’s back bothered him a little bit in the preseason last year and during the first few games, kind of like it has here,” Rike says. “I think around our fourth and fifth games of the year, he had to sit because of his back. After that he was able to run and it didn’t bother him the rest of the year, except for a little pain here and there.”
Rike says the problem didn’t resurface until Ousley began trying to get into shape for this season. He says it bothered Ousley some during the end of the summer, but when the Tigers began to go at full strength it really began to cause problems.
“Probably the preseason conditioning here is a little tougher than what we went through [at Tyler] and what he’s used to,” Rike says. “That’s when it began to really bother him.
“But he’s tough,” Rike continues. “Jermaine has some toughness in him, and he’ll fight through that nagging stuff.”
Burr, who stretches Ousley religiously before games and practice to try to keep him from tightening up, says Ousley fought through some back problems in the off-season program, but nothing too severe. He says Ousley would put heat on his back at times, but added it is not uncommon for many players to put heat on their backs – much like pitchers ice their arms – and at the time he didn’t pay it too much attention.
Burr says he didn’t learn of Ousley’s past back problems until months after he had been here, and that if he had known sooner, it could have possibly been taken care of before the season started.
“Right at the end of September, he told me that he had had a back problem that caused him to miss some games in junior college,” Burr says. “After about another week of talking to him we decided to get an MRI done. And it was the Thursday [October 2nd] before the football team played at Cincinnati that we took Jermaine to have it done. That’s when we found out that his whole lower back was inflamed.”
That MRI was the first Ousley ever had on his back. He will have another in about a month to see how things are going.

		NOTES by Dennis Freeland AN IMPORTANT SPORTS WEEKEND … Tic Price’s Memphis Tigers, fresh from an exciting 80-78 upset of Oklahoma, get a chance to make a name for themselves this weekend as undefeated Tennessee visits The Pyramid, followed two days later by a Miami team which at this writing was also sporting an unblemished record. The game Saturday night, televised live from Norman, Oklahoma, was undoubtedly seen by a large Memphis crowd, many of whom were probably getting their first look at the new Tigers. They made a nice first impression. A full house on Saturday will give the program a boost. A win would push it even further. Meanwhile, the Tennessee Oilers close out their season Sunday when Pittsburgh visits the Liberty Bowl. This is the game which stirred the most anticipation when the NFL schedule was announced. It looks certain at this point that the Oilers will be back in town next year, and a crowd of 40,000 to 50,000 would be a positive statement for the organization as it completes its first season away from Houston. Pepper Rodgers and the local Oilers staff have quietly turned things around during the course of the season. With a full off-season to prepare for 1998, the Oilers should be in good shape when the first game rolls around next year. … LIFE AIN’T FAIR: Gino Torretta has a Heisman Trophy. Peyton Manning doesn’t. … AN ELEGANT WINNER: Price barely smiled after his team’s rousing win over Oklahoma. As he stoically walked off the court, he noticed his players stomping on the OU insignia at the middle of the Lloyd Noble Center court, and quickly indicated for them to stop. It was Marcus Moody who understood the coach’s directive and told the team to head to the locker room. The other players took Moody’s cue and headed for the locker room. Any doubt who leads this team? … A STREAK OF TWO CITIES: Price will be going for his 26th consecutive home win against Tennessee. His streak, of course, dates back to his days at UNO. Speaking of streaks, Price-coached teams are now 20-1 when they score 80 or more points. … IT’S RAINING TREYS: Tiger teams have hit at least one three-point shot in 188 consecutive games. The streak goes back to December 1991, the team’s first year in The Pyramid. n

“If we would have found it even at the end of August, I believe it would’ve been something we could’ve taken care of,” Burr adds. “Unfortunately, there’s just not a whole lot of time right now and it’s probably going to aggravate him on and off for the rest of the year.”
In the long run, time and rehab is what Burr says it will probably take to get Ousley completely healthy. He said surgery would come into play only if a severe disc problem occurs. Even if surgery is necessary, Burr says Ousley would “be playing pick-up games by summer.” He adds that he does not believe this will hamper Ousley’s senior season, or career after college, in any way.
Postmortem cadaver studies have shown that at the time of death, upwards of 90 percent of all people have a bulging disc. So the words “bulging disc” could mean a number of things and not necessarily indicate a serious medical problem. It is indeed possible for a person to have a bulging disc and function pain-free.
Ousley participates in a culture where “playing with pain” is what a “team player” does. So it comes as no surprise when he downplays the significance of his injury. He’s a guy whose personal numbers of 10.8 points and 5.8 rebounds per game suffer because he is playing out of position. By playing center, he’s forced to guard bigger players and thus picks up cheap fouls which have hampered him this season at both Vanderbilt and Oklahoma. But it suits the team better for Ousley to play center so fellow Tiger Omar Sneed can play power forward and the two can be on the court at the same time – so that’s what he does, and does gladly.
Ousley tends to speak of his back as more of a team injury than a personal one. In Ousley’s eyes, this injury hurts Memphis as much as it hurts him.
“I look at it like it’s just a sprained ankle,” Ousley explains. “It’s just one of those nagging injuries that we have to rest and try to rehab back as much as possible.
“I know I’m having back problems, but right now I’m learning to play through the pain,” he adds. “It’s very important for me to stay healthy and it could hurt us if I let it affect me mentally. Physically I feel like I can play through it right now, so I’m not going to concentrate on it and let it bring the team down.”
Ousley realizes how important it is for him to play. With center Michael Brittian out with a stress fracture, the Tigers have only three post players available. Without him, the term “shorthanded” takes on a whole new meaning for Tic Price and his first Tiger squad. Ousley says knowing how desperately Memphis needs him on the court gives him more of an incentive to play through the pain.
“It makes me want to go out and push myself harder,” he says. “With my teammates knowing that I’m hurt and I’m still trying to go as hard as I possibly can, it will drive them to play better.”
As if Ousley’s back wasn’t a big enough problem, he and Burr found another one earlier this season.
“It was funny,” Burr says with a laugh. “I was stretching Jermaine at the fieldhouse and he said, ‘Man, I think one of my legs is longer than the other,’ and come to find out it is. It’s just a hair longer, but it’s enough that we had him some orthotics [shoe inserts] made.”
Burr adds that something that simple could improve Ousley’s back problem.
Ousley shakes his head with a smile at the mention of the word “orthotics.”
“If it ain’t one thing, it’s another,” he says with a grin. “When I stand up I bend my left leg. I’ve done it my whole life. But it’s corrected now, I think.”
If Memphis goes anywhere this basketball season, a lot will depend on where Ousley takes them. He’s confident his shoulders can carry the weight. Whether his back can is the million-dollar question. n