Mason Faulkner sidelined following ankle surgery

Following Colorado's afternoon practice in Boulder Wednesday, Tad Boyle revealed that graduate transfer guard Mason Faulkner had underwent ankle surgery and thus would be unavailable for the majority of the summer as he goes about his rehabilitation.

Faulkner, a 6-foot-1, 190-pound guard who signed with the Buffs following two years at Western Carolina, where he averaged 17.3 points, 5.5 assists and 5.8 rebounds per game in that span with the Catamounts, was brought in to bolster the CU backcourt now absent of McKinley Wright IV for the first time in four years.

“Obviously, I’m not McKinley Wright and this is not the team from last year, but I definitely think we can keep going in the right direction," Faulkner said shortly after committing to CU in April. "I don’t like to put stuff in the air that hasn’t been proven yet, but we’re definitely going to get to work."

Before transferring to Western Carolina, Faulkner played two seasons at Northern Kentucky, averaging 6.5 points in 65 career games played there.

Per Boyle, Faulkner's ankle ailment wasn't anything that happened following his arrival in Boulder June 1, but rather, a thorn in his side that he's been dealing with for some time.

While a specific timetable on Faulkner's return to action is unknown, Boyle expects to be without him for at least a month-plus.

“He had surgery on his ankle and he’ll be out for most of the summer," Boyle said. "We hope to get him back sometime in August or September. We don’t know the timeframe. It’ll depend on his rehab. It was just something that had been kind of nagging and we felt it was better off."

"He could have probably maybe played through it this year, but he was in a lot of pain and rather than mask the pain with painkillers and risk further injury, he and his family decided that it’s better to clean it up now and get it behind us."

Granted, Faulkner will be deprived of on-the-court time in the preseason to continue learning CU's playbook and getting acclimated to his new home with the Buffs, the consensus amongst he and the coaching staff seems to be one of relief that he was able to get the surgery done with here and now.

It remains to be seen when he'll be able to partake in practice again, but if Boyle's initial timeframe diagnosis holds up, and Faulkner hits the practice court by September, he should have enough time to prepare himself for the 2021-2022 season, which officially begins Nov. 9 at home vs. Montana State.

"It’s unfortunate that he’ll miss the offseason and miss Costa Rica but hopefully he’s at every practice and soaking everything in mentally," Boyle said. "Physically, he’s a strong, mature guy and spent a lot of time in the gym the last four or five years, so that stuff should come back relatively quickly."

"Having Mason Faulkner 100% is a heck of a lot having him at 60 or 70%, which is basically where he was operating.”