Drew Gordon of UCLA tears knee ligament

I'm not sure how much more difficult things could be on Ben Howland right now.

For the second straight season, he will be losing a ton of talent from his roster. After Kevin Love, Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, and Russell Westbrook bolted for the pros in 2008, Howland loses essentially his entire starting line-up this off-season as Josh Shipp, Darren Collison, and Alfred Aboya graduated and Jrue Holiday made the leap to the league.

With a roster that will be obscenely young (Michael Roll, James Keefe, and Nikola Dragovic are the only players that will see minutes that aren't freshmen or sophomores), Howland will have to depend heavily on some of the sophomores that saw minutes as freshmen in leadership roles.

That task just got more difficult as Drew Gordon, a 6'8" forward that averaged 3.6 ppg and 3.4 rpg in 10.9 mpg and was projected to start as a sophomore, injured his knee on Tuesday. The injury was suffered during the 2009 USA U19 team trials in Colorado Springs.

Gordon apparently partially tore the patellar tendon in his right knee. It is not yet known exactly how serious the injury is, whether surgery will be required, and how long Gordon will be out of commission.

But I can tell you one thing: anytime "tear" and "knee" are involved in the same sentence, it is not a good sign.

If Gordon is not ready to go by the start of the season, expect Keefe, sophomore J'Mison Morgan, and freshmen Brendan Lane and Reeves Nelson to compete for the minutes.