Michigan Wolverines Football-Vilain Has Surgery, St. Juste Out For The Year
Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh reported during Tuesday’s Big Ten Teleconference that sophomore Ben St. Juste will miss the season.
St. Juste has been banged up since spring, and Harbaugh confirmed an injury had done him in.
“Ben St. Juste is unable to play this season,” Harbaugh said.
He added that redshirt freshman Luiji Vilain had also undergone surgery, though he didn’t get into specifics. Vilain missed all of last season with a knee injury.
“Luiji had a successful surgery a couple days ago, and doctors feel like it went well,” Harbaugh said. “He’s doing well, and now it’s rehab and healing from here. His sprits are good, and we feel like he’ll be able to progress forward.”
Sophomore safety Jaylen Kelly-Powell returned played a bit in Saturday’s game with Nebraska after missing several weeks. Harbaugh confirmed he had also been “working through something.”
NOTES
• Harbaugh said he liked the four games for frosh rule and that he and his staff were very conscious of who should play and how much. A handful of freshmen will likely continue to play, while others will redshirt.
“I think it’s going good,” Harbaugh said. “I have been for it since it’s been established, think it’s really good for the student athletes. The application of it has been good, very positive. I haven’t seen anything that hasn’t made it a productive, positive thing for the players."
Some believe it will lead to more transfers if freshmen don’t see the results they want in four games. Harbaugh isn’t one of them.
“It’s giving the players more flexibility, which I don’t see as a negative,” he said.
• Recruiting has changed, to the point that any kid who wants to be seen can put his own film on social media. Harbaugh remembered the days of videotape during his own recruitment in the early 1980s.
“They’re more readily seen,” Harbaugh said. “You don’t have to wait. For example, when I was going through recruiting, I had one videotape, would send it to schools and ask if they could send it back. Then I’d send it to another school. Sometimes it took days, weeks even months. I had the one copy.
“Compare that to now where a youngster can have video seen multiple ways by all the schools. It’s a pretty dramatic difference and a very good thing.”
Very few recruits go under the radar, he said, though one — receiver Ronnie Bell, the Kansas City player of the year and a Michigan frosh — seems to have.
“Hudl video … a youngster is able to put his own video on social media and have it seen … twitter, as an example," Harbaugh said. "And now there’s the ability to communicate instantly. It used to be letter writing when I went through it. That was a long time ago. There have been positives that way.”
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