Correction appended

GW men’s basketball coach Karl Hobbs said sophomore Travis King, who missed this entire season after injuring his knee last August, should be ready to play again next season. Hobbs said he believes King will be 100 percent healthy by the beginning of next season and he expects him to resume his role as point guard.

King, who used crutches for a long time after having surgery on his right knee in November and then walked with a limp after that, was shooting around before the Colonials’ 67-63 loss to Massachusetts Saturday night. He appeared to be walking almost completely normally and was also jumping, which inevitably put pressure on his knee, but he looked to be landing without pain.

Hobbs said King would be applying for a medical redshirt but neither he nor anyone with the program had yet been notified if King had been granted the extra year.

Pops Mensah-Bonsu returns to Smith Center

Former standout Pops Mensah-Bonsu was in attendance at the game against UMass. Mensah-Bonsu is currently playing with Benetton Treviso, outside Venice, in the Italian league. The forward, who was picked up by the Dallas Mavericks as a free agent after going undrafted in 2006 and jumped between the NBA and the Developmental League before heading overseas, said he is enjoying his time in Italy but that it has been an adjustment since a different style of basketball is played in Eruope. He also said that he is hoping to be back in the American leagues for good by this summer.

Mensah-Bonsu’s freshman year, 2002-2003, the squad was 12-17 and 5-11 in the Atlantic 10, winning the same number of conference games as this year’s team.

Mensah-Bonsu said he sees a resemblance between the team he played on his freshman year and this year’s team in that players from his squad had difficulty meshing and it took a while for everything to click on the court.

“It hurts my heart to see the program like this,” he said. “But you have to remember that when I started, we weren’t that good either. I think next year they’ll be a lot better. They’re still relatively young and learning how to play together.”

Diggs finishes season as Colonials’ leading scorer

Junior Rob Diggs had seven points against the Minutemen but led the team in scoring for the season, averaging 13.9 points in 26 games and tallying 75 more points than the team’s next leading scorer, junior Wynton Witherspoon. Witherspoon, who averaged 11 points a game, and Diggs were the only two members of the Colonials to average more than 10 points a game.

Diggs also led the team in rebounds, with 7.7 per game. Senior Maureece Rice, who was released from the team late last week, was first on the team in assists with 60, followed by Witherspoon and sophomore Johnny Lee. All three played the point guard position during the season after King injured his knee. Lee, a walk-on, finished the season as the point guard and started the last eight games of the season.

This article has been changed to reflect the following correction:

Correction: March 12, 2008

The Hatchet erroneously reported that Pops Mensah-Bonsu was drafted in 2006 by the Dallas Mavericks. He went undrafted and was picked up by the Mavericks as a free agent.