TYREE RETURNS TO IGNITE OLE MISS HOOPS

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Sophomore Guard 100 Percent, Ready for the Season

Story Featured in the Ole Miss vs. Arkansas Football Game Program (Oct. 28)

By Brian Scott Rippee, OleMissSports.com

Roughly eight inches of swollen fibrous connective tissue runs down the center of Breein Tyree's left knee and trickles down into his shin. On the surface, it's simply a scar stemming from surgery he had on April 22, 2016 to repair a torn ACL. But the patch of inflamed skin also serves as a daily reminder of the battle the sophomore point guard had to fight before his college career even started.

He soared through the air inside Alumni Gymnasium in Lawrenceville, New Jersey on the campus of Rider University, gliding over a ball rack and towards the rim. Tyree was a carefree 18-year-old kid trying to flash his coveted explosiveness inside a 1,650-seat gym at a high school dunk contest one March night in the spring of 2016. He ferociously stuffed the ball inside the rim, completing a windmill dunk and headed towards the ground. As Tyree hit the wood, his knee buckled inward and caused him to slip onto the floor.

"I was on the ground, then ran off to the side and told someone to get my mom," Tyree recalled. "I didn't think it was torn. You never think it will happen to you."

Tyree didn't know it at the time, but his left ACL had torn just two months before he was supposed to report to Ole Miss to begin his college career. He hobbled around for a week or so, resting what he thought may have been a tweaked muscle while contemplating an MRI he eventually got. Tyree returned to his house one day to his mom, dad and brother waiting on him in the living room. The results had come in, and his parents were tasked with breaking the news.

A tear rolled down Tyree's face as he slipped away to solitude in his bedroom.

"I wanted to be alone," Tyree said. "When you get news like that, you don't know how you are going to take it."

There he sat, wondering what his future would be.

"d***, I have a torn ACL," Tyree said. "What am I going to tell my coaches? I have a long road ahead. There were a million things going through my mind."

He called former Ole Miss assistant coach Bill Armstrong to tell him what happened and apologize for what was nothing more than an accidental stretch of poor luck. Armstrong had a comforting message for him.

"We wanted you then, and we want you now," Tyree recalled Armstrong saying. "You committed early and stayed loyal to us. Now we are going to stay loyal to you. We are going to help you through this."

If there is one thing Tyree would like you to know about him, it's that he doesn't dwell on things long. He made a decision in his room that day he wouldn't let this deter his college career. He was going to do whatever it took.

Less than a month after surgery, Tyree headed south to Mississippi, toward an entirely new world and a future that appeared cloudy. Would he redshirt? When would he be healthy again?

"Not only is it the rehab every day, he is adjusting to college, adjusting to classes, life away from home, living in the dorm and adjusting to a new group of friends," athletic trainer Andrew Beyke said. "You have a lot of new things. I play counselor 90 percent of the time."

Beyke was one of the first people Tyree met, and they became close pretty quickly. Six days a week, they met and rehabbed his knee. Beyke says a common misconception about injuries is that the same injury has a uniformed recovery timeframe. It's much more than that, and a lot of forces are at work at once. It's the precision of the surgery, the genetic makeup of the injured person and the strength of the muscles around the injured area.

It became evident that most if not all of those factors were working in Tyree's favor.

"He just kept hitting every mile marker a little bit early," Beyke said. "That's a tribute to him and his work ethic."

Tyree worked tirelessly as he and Beyke attempted to rebuild a knee that served as a trigger for the rare explosiveness that made Tyree a must-have for head coach Andy Kennedy. They monitored his quads, calves and hamstrings trying to make sure each one was near a similar percentage of strength to its counterpart on the right leg.

The healing accelerated so rapidly that Tyree was going through non-contact portions of practice in early October. Two weeks before the season started, Kennedy shouted for Tyree to jump into a scrimmage.

Tyree checked into his first college game against UMass on November 14, 2017, less than nine months after his ACL had ripped in a New Jersey gym.

"I wouldn't say I was surprised," Tyree said. "I am more so just blessed. Some people never come back from an ACL injury and here I am six months later, coming back ready to play."

Things didn't come easy, however. Tyree was tasked with adjusting to the speed of the college game while simultaneously recovering from a major injury. The explosiveness that Kennedy once compared to the likes of Russell Westbrook, the jumping ability that makes Tyree great, had not returned yet. He was essentially a shell of his former self.

"When he first got back he had to make the game so much slower and make it more of a cerebral game, whereas he had relied on his athleticism for his entire life," Beyke said. "I think it made him a better point guard."

His shots were getting blocked, and he was having to play an entirely different way than anything he'd previously known.

"I was getting blocked all the time," Tyree said. "It helped me learn how to finish under the basket, finding angles. Now I know how to score that way, and I have the ability to score above the rim again too. I learned a whole lot, and it will make me better for this year."

As he adjusted, the ability slowly came back. Tyree feels comfortable when he walks into a gym and knows he can throw one down anytime. That feeling finally came back in a late-February game at Mississippi State. He dunked three times.

"We saw it building through practice, and it was only a matter of time before it came in a game," Beyke said.

The freshman point guard came into his own towards the end of the year. He played in 34 games and averaged seven points per game in a season that concluded before the year anniversary of his injury. A remarkable journey and recovery had come full circle.

Tyree immediately points to Beyke as the man responsible for where he got to as quickly as he did, as well as keep him sane.

The six-day per week workouts forged a close bond between the two. Tyree is entering his sophomore year fully healthy. His coach thinks the difference is almost unrecognizable.

"He was not close to the athlete, even though he made some athletic plays, to where he is now," Kennedy said.

Tyree is full go now. He can sense it when he jumps. The explosiveness has returned, and his mind has cleared. There are thoughts about the injury that linger in the back of his mind, but those are more of the appreciative type. They usually are triggered by staring at the reminder that is the eight inches of raised skin on his left leg.

"You never know when you are going to end up in a brace on the sideline," Tyree said. "It makes me remember not being able to play the game I love to play. It taught me to never take anything for granted because it can all change in a split second."

http://www.olemisssports.com/sports/m-b ... 17aaa.html
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