Hines: What to make of Keshon Gilbert's NCAA Tournament absence for Iowa State basketball

AMES – Keshon Gilbert fidgeted in his chair, clearly uncomfortable. He shifted his weight. He diverted his eyes. He gestured in exasperation.

He sighed in frustration, or, perhaps, in resignation.

Whatever the emotions and thoughts that were going through the Iowa State point guard’s mind as he sat there in a T-Mobile Arena locker room in Kansas City this week and fielded questions about his health, it was clear that Gilbert didn’t know exactly what to say or how to say it.

Either because the injured Iowa State star didn’t have answers or, maybe, because he did and just couldn’t bring himself to say it.

Where we find things now, though, is Gilbert done in an Iowa State uniform, just when he and the Cyclones need each other most. Iowa State opens against 14-seed Lipscomb at 12:30 p.m. CT on Friday in Milwaukee.

“We’ve decided that he needs to focus on his rehab and getting his body back right, so he won’t be available as we move forward,” Iowa State coach T.J. Otzelberger said Sunday, minutes after his team was slotted as the No. 3 seed in the NCAA Tournament's South Region. “He’s got to focus with him getting back healthy and getting back to being him.”

It’s the culmination of a month of declining play from and increasing speculation about Gilbert, and only the former is going to stop with Gilbert on the sideline. The conjecture certainly won’t.

Here’s how we got here:

Gilbert is dealing with a groin injury, one he says he sustained at the end of December, cost him two games at the end of February and now has upended March.

After missing games at Houston and Oklahoma State, Gilbert returned to help Iowa State smash Arizona, 84-67, on March 1, but he played a season-low 23 minutes in which he committed seven turnovers. What followed, however, was a strong 13-point, eight-steal performance in 43 minutes in double-overtime against BYU.

Then he unexpectedly missed the regular-season finale at Kansas State. That would have been enough to cause agita on its own, but Gilbert, who rarely posts to X/Twitter, put out a cryptic post not long before tip-off of a game he wouldn’t play in. The post was merely song lyrics, but their I'm-in-this-for-myself vibe, coupled with Gilbert’s relative inactivity on the platform, seemed odd, if maybe innocuous. He eventually deleted it.

Then Gilbert played 11 aimless minutes in the Big 12 Tournament opener. I say aimless because Gilbert played off the ball – he normally initiates a huge percentage of Iowa State’s offense – but after the game when asked about it, he said he didn’t even realize that.

Additionally, he attempted just two shots, both 3s, when the strength and direction of his game almost always points downhill, toward the rim. Rather than attacking the basket, he was content to drift and fire from distance.

It was not normal Gilbert.

Nor was it typical after the game when he sat in that locker room chair, uncertain of what to say.

“It just depends on how I feel that day,” Gilbert said Wednesday of his availability. “If I can play 30 (minutes), then I will.

“I want to get back to where I can play 30, but if that’s not what I can do then I’ll do what’s best for me and my health.”

Now a decision has been made that what’s best is for Gilbert to not play.

“love/appreciate all of your support!” Gilbert wrote on X on Sunday night. “i want yall to kno that there is nothing more to the situation. Im battling an injury that just can’t seem to get better while playing on it. But enough about me! We a 3 seed in Milwaukee .. Ik the guys are going to make you all proud!”

It’s unlikely to dampen any speculation because, well, there’s lots to speculate about.

It’s atypical to rule a player out for three weeks of games you don’t even know if you’ll play. It’s odd to not confirm if Gilbert would be traveling to Milwaukee with the team, as Otzelberger declined to do.

It’s likely there’s lots at play here.

Gilbert simply has not been the player he was to start the season, when he looked first like an All-American and then, as Curtis Jones emerged as All-America candidate himself, as an all-league player for a national-title contender. It wasn’t as though Gilbert’s play had simply slipped, it just evolved as the Cyclones had.

But somewhere around early February, Gilbert’s play did begin to deteriorate.

Through the season’s first 20 games, he scored in double-figures 17 times while averaging 2.8 turnovers. After that, he scored in double-figures in just three of nine games while averaging 4.1 turnovers and missing four games. Five times in those nine games, he committed at least five turnovers.

Clearly, the injury took its toll. A groin injury is exceedingly difficult to play through. It limits your explosion. It hurts your balance. Its limitations influence what other parts of your body can do as part of the body’s core.

And with all that going on, it has to be exceedingly challenging mentally. To see yourself not be able to what you’ve done before. To not be at your best when the lights are brightest. When the stakes are highest.

The mental and emotional strain that must inflict – especially for a player in his final season of collegiate eligibility – has to be tiresome. It seemed to bubble up at times on the court, with Gilbert more frequently showing visible frustration during games when he and Otzelberger’s Iowa State teams have made it a point to not show that sort of emotion.

So you’re weaving physical injury and psychological stress together into a tightening knot when neither your body nor your level of play improves.

It led to that uncomfortable locker room and then this dramatic decision.

Mostly, it’s incredibly disappointing for both Gilbert and Iowa State.

Gilbert transformed himself from a middling high school recruit from St. Louis and unheralded transfer from UNLV into a dynamic presence on last year’s Sweet 16 squad and then a critical component on this year’s championship contender. He was the best player on a top-10 team more than a few at times throughout this season.

He’s also a guy who has drawn almost nothing but praise behind the scenes from his teammates and coaches over the last two seasons.

Hard-working. No drama. Sweet. Fun. Good kid. That’s how Gilbert is described both publicly and privately.

So to see it end for him like this with injury and intrigue is, well, frankly, it just stinks.

Both for a guy who has given so much to be a huge part of Iowa State’s success the last two years and for a Cyclones team that looked throughout the season’s first three months as one of the very best teams in the nation.

Gilbert won’t get to put a bow on his Iowa State career, and the Cyclones are going to have a hard time hanging a new banner without him.

That’s really all there is to say.

Iowa State columnist Travis Hines has covered the Cyclones for the Des Moines Register and Ames Tribune since 2012. Contact him at thines@amestrib.com or (515) 284-8000. Follow him on X at @TravisHines21.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: What Keshon Gilbert injury means for Iowa State basketball

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Hines: What to make of Keshon Gilbert's NCAA Tournament absence for Iowa State basketball

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