[Sportscolumn is running down the ten most gruesome sports injuries. Here’s #3]
During the 2006 Big East tournament, everyone in the arena and everyone at home were ready to see Villanova and Pittsburgh get it on inside Madison Square Garden. But what nobody saw coming was one of the nastiest and oddest injuries ever caught on camera.
During the beginning of the second half of the game, Nova’s Allan Ray and Pitt’s Carl Krauser both went after a loose ball and as Krauser reached out he appeared to have inadvertently poked Ray’s eyeball out of his skull. Ray lost vision in his eye briefly but would quickly bounce back from the stomach turning injury to play in the team’s opening game of the NCAA Tournament.
Turns out that the injury wasn’t nearly as bad as it appeared on TV, or in person for that matter, as doctors revealed that the eye had not been dislodged from its socket, but, instead the eyelid had been pushed behind the eyeball which gave the appearance that it had popped out. The diagnosis was simply a soft-tissue injury.
Still, while it turned out to be a minor ordeal, to the millions who were watching that game live, it was just like watching a scene from a Warner Bros. cartoon come to life. Only this scene made them want to puke.