There's no doubt, something weird is going on with Desmond Claude and the University of Washington. From his personal reasons to miss practice last week, to a "team decision" not to play him in the following game. Finally, a post by Claude on social media saying he never recovered from an injury and he's going to leave all "on-court" activities for the season.
The strangeness doesn't stop there. It actually gets a bit stranger as head coach Danny Sprinkle was asked about Claude's post. Sprinkle deflects the question and instead focuses on support for Claude and how great UW Healthcare is for all students on campus.
He then refused to say any more about it, even with a follow up question. Here's the full quote:
"Everybody saw his post last night, where, you know, he says he's injured, and the University of Washington has elite student healthcare. It's one of the tops in the entire world, and it's centered around every student athlete being taken care of, not just every student athlete, but every student on campus. We're here for him. That's pretty much all I can say right now."Danny Sprinkle
Danny Sprinkle stays clear of talking directly about Desmond Claude's injury
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The fact that he references the post as the post in which Claude says he's injured." Is telling. The fact that he didn't state the injury as a fact is strange. Maybe it was just a slip of the tongue or truly there's some disagreement about the injury in question. Either way, he quickly says that Claude, being a student at UW, will have access to the top healthcare among universities in the world.
What the message from Sprinkle clearly tells you is that he's not going to say anything that could later bite him. Nor will he implicate or throw anyone under the bus. Not Claude, not the training staff, not his coaching staff, he's going to stay above all that. Deflect and offer support. That was the strategy going into the press conference, and he executed it.
Sprinkle gave the press conference nothing to work with, but by doing that, confirmed that there is more to the story. What that story is may never be revealed, but for now, you can file it away as strange.
There's clearly a process at play, and privacy is a big part of it. For now, this is where it is, and it will be interesting to see how much Claude is around the program in the coming months.