UPDATED: Thursday, March 20, 2019 at 6:10 p.m.

SALT LAKE CITY — Frank Howard will be out indefinitely due to a violation of Syracuse athletic department policy, SU Athletics announced in a release Wednesday afternoon.

“(Frank) won’t be here with us tomorrow,” SU head coach Jim Boeheim said Wednesday afternoon.

Howard was in the midst of playing some of the best basketball of his life, coming off a career-high 28 points in the ACC tournament loss to Duke. The senior was setting up for one final NCAA Tournament run.

Instead, the Orange will possibly be without their senior point guard against Baylor in the NCAA Tournament Round of 64. There are two lineup options based off of what SU has tried previously this season: Tyus Battle could start at point guard with Buddy Boeheim playing the 2, or Jalen Carey could start alongside Battle in the backcourt.

“Fortunately, Tyus has played the point quite a bit this year, even when Frank came back at Duke and several other spots along the way,” Boeheim said. “Pittsburgh, Boston College, we did play Tyus at the point, so he’s been there. Jalen’s had good practices. Everybody — it is very similar to last week when we found out Tyus wouldn’t play. I thought the players made a great adjustment. We played really well in both games in the tournament. And we’re going to have to make that same adjustment this week with a different guy going.”

When Howard missed time early in the season with injury, Carey was also out with injury so Buddy and Battle were the starting backcourt for the two games to open Syracuse’s season. Based on what Tyus Battle and Oshae Brissett said on Wednesday during media availability, the SU players had learned of the news recently.

Howard was shown practicing in the Utah Jazz practice facility in a video on Syracuse basketball’s Twitter account posted Tuesday.

The Orange are scheduled to tip-off with Baylor at 9:57 p.m. on Thursday evening.

This post has been updated with additional reporting.

Published on March 20, 2019 at 5:18 pm

Contact Billy: wmheyen@syr.edu | @Wheyen3