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Culture / Sporting Life

University of Houston Star Guard Emanuel Sharp Expected Back For Kansas Showdown — Foot Ligament Injury Is Being Managed

One Of College Basketball's Most Impactful Players To Only Miss One Game

BY // 01.22.25

University of Houston starting guard Emanuel Sharp is expected to return from his foot injury for the Cougars’ showdown at Kansas on Saturday, PaperCity has learned. Sharp missed Wednesday night’s weather-delayed game against Utah with a ligament strain in his right foot, an injury which he keeps reaggravating after first hurting it earlier in the season. It is more of a foot ligament issue than an ankle injury, multiple sources tell PaperCity.

Playing through this type of injury is largely a pain issue according to sources, and Sharp already feels better Wednesday than he did on Tuesday when he first re-hurt the foot. That puts him on track to play against the Jayhawks in what is already shaping up as one of the Big 12’s best new rivalries.

“He’s tough so he will play through pain as long as it doesn’t hamper the team,” Derrick Sharp, Emanuel’s dad and a former professional basketball player in Israel himself, tells PaperCity.

Emanuel Sharp has been working with University of Houston associate athletic director for sports medicine John Houston, one of the most respected trainers in sports, on dealing with the ligament strain in his foot. He’s been in and out of a boot since late December, giving it a chance to heal whenever he can. Re-hurting it is always an issue, which is what happened on Tuesday, the day before the Utah game.

Sharp is averaging 13.8 points and 1.3 steals per game while shooting 45.9 percent from 3-point range and 92.7 percent from the free-throw line, which both lead the Big 12, for Kelvin Sampson’s seventh ranked team. He’s arguably the best hard shot and deep shot maker in college basketball and is a vital bedrock for one of the country’s true national championship contenders.

Houston beat Utah without Sharp 70-36 to move to 15-3 overall and 7-0 in the Big 12, a game ahead of Iowa State and Arizona and two games ahead of 14-4 (5-2 Big 12) Kansas in the conference standings.

The University of Houston Cougars beat the Butler Bulldogs 79-51 at the Fertitta Center
University of Houston guard Emanuel Sharp can create his own shot. (Photo by F. Carter Smith)

UH’s game at No. 12 Kansas Saturday (5:30 pm, ESPN) is one of the Cougars’ marquee games of the season, one which will have a lot of national eyes on it. Houston won the Big 12 last season in its first year in the power conference, sprinting by a Kansas team that had long ruled the conference under Bill Self. Kelvin Sampson’s team lost at Kansas 78-65 in early February last season before turning around and walloping the Jayhawks 76-46 in a memorable regular season home finale.

No big-time player wants to miss this kind of game and Emanuel Sharp is not expected to have to sit out a second straight game.

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