Roby making gains

By Brian Rosenthal / Huskers.com

Well, look on the bright side.

Isaiah Roby, sidelined for months with a pelvic injury, is proud to say he can now bench his body weight.

“When I first got here, it was kind of embarrassing to be in the weight room, honestly,” said Roby, a freshman wing on the Nebraska basketball team.

Roby, from Dixon, Illinois, arrived in Lincoln in June weighing 197 pounds and able to bench press 175 pounds.

“I remember in high school they tell you that you should always be able to bench your weight,” Roby said. “I could never bench my weight. Never even close.”

Today, the 6-foot-8 Roby weighs 218 pounds.

He can bench press 235.

“It’s cool to see actual gains in the weight room,” Roby said at Wednesday’s photo and media day for Nebraska players at the Hendricks Training Complex.

What isn’t quite as cool is why Roby was able to spend so much extra time lifting his upper body.

For two years, Roby has been playing with recurring pain in his pelvic area. He initially treated it as a hip flexor injury until athletic trainers at Nebraska diagnosed the problem as a stress reaction with his pelvis.

Roby’s injury is one that developed over time, one doctors told him is usually seen with defensive backs in football. A high jumper in track, Roby said planting as hard as he could on one foot likely contributed to his problem.

Only time off would help Roby heal. The initial timeline of eight weeks came, and it went.

“Obviously it wasn’t eight weeks,” said Roby, who was sidelined in early July and just recently returned to practice.

“It was almost to the point where they were like if I would have fractured it fully, it might have been healed by now instead of having it heal itself from the inside out. It kind of stinks.”

The good news is that Roby expects to be near 100 percent by the time Nebraska begins the regular season Nov. 13 against Sacramento State.

He’s been cleared to go full-go, but he’s limited in how long he can participate. Roby said he’s allowed to go for about 40 minutes total of a practice.

“I feel really sore, so that’s good for me,” Roby said. “For a while there, I was just relaxing and getting my upper body killed by (strength) Coach (Tim) Wilson. Usually we lift four times a week, we do legs, arms, legs. But I was straight arms there for a while. So it’s good to have my legs sore again.”

Roby, a four-star recruit by various recruiting services and a national Top 100 recruit by Scout.com, will be an integral part of fifth-year coach Tim Miles’ young Huskers, when fully healthy.

Roby is preparing to play three positions.

“He has a lot of athleticism,” sophomore wing Jack McVeigh said. “He really can guard a lot of positions, will be able to switch and be aggressive on the inside. He’s had a couple of dunk attempts where you’re like, ‘Wow, we haven’t seen athleticism like that.’ That’s a special kind of body he’s working with.”

Roby posed for a photo Wednesday with his outstretched arms palming a pair of basketballs, a testament to his 7-1 wing span.

He averaged 19.7 points, 10.5 rebounds, 5.5 assists and 3.9 blocks his senior season in high school but admits he’s behind the learning curve because of the time he missed with rehabilitation.

“The coaches, they try to keep me motivated. I’m just really hard on myself in general,” Roby said. “In high school, I was really hard on myself. I know I’m not going to dominate here, but in high school, it was like you want to dominate the game. You don’t want to have many mistakes and I’m trying to carry that over to the college game.

“It’s tough. I would have been at a disadvantage coming into college without the injury, and then plus the injury, I feel like I’m set back even more. I know it’s going to come with time. I just have to wait on it.”

Reach Brian at brosenthal@huskers.com or follow him on Twitter @GBRosenthal.