There’s a difference between playing hurt and playing injured. Playing hurt can be rolling an ankle in practice, or the regular bumps and bruises that come with playing in just about any college sport. Playing injured includes torn ligaments, broken bones, or anything else that might show up on an X-ray or an MRI.

Samuels said she spends more time warming up than she did before shoulder surgery, but after 12 games, she's back in her familiar spot as the Mustangs' leader in three-pointers (photo by SMU athletics).

SMU guard Jillian Samuels played the 2008-09 season hurt and injured. At the start of the season, she was defending teammate Brittany Gilliam in practice when their arms got tangled, Samuels said she felt pain in her right shoulder.

“It was nothing serious,” Samuels said. “It was something very simple — I was (defending) B.G., and I had gone down and she came up, and it wasn’t even like she came up hard, but when I came down and she came up, my shoulder came up funny, and it was hurting from then on.

“I knew it was hurting. I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know exactly what was wrong. I didn’t think that it was anything serious, though, but it really hurt bad. I iced it, and it was feeling funny. I couldn’t do simple stuff like reaching back in a car, or reaching over to pick something up. That kind of stuff even bothers me a little now, but it’s nothing serious.”

As it turned out, Samuels had suffered a torn labrum in her right (shooting) shoulder. The labrum is a piece of cartilage found in the shoulder joint that helps hold the ball at the end of the humerus (upper arm) in the shoulder socket, and helps keep several ligaments around the joint in place. Considering Samuels is one of the most prolific shooters in SMU history, to say the injury was a concern would be a gross understatement.

Samuels could have opted for surgery, which would have sidelined her for most or all of her junior season. When she was told that she could play with her shoulder as it was, her decision was made. She was able to shoot — although other tasks were difficult and painful — playing in 30 of the Mustangs’ 32 games.

“At first, no,” Samuels said when asked if she considred shutting down her junior season to have her shoulder surgically repaired, “because I was thinking it was something minor the whole time. Trying to throw baseball passes up the court — I just couldn’t do it. Even shooting — it hurt, but I just kind of had to deal with it.”

Deal with it she did. The Ponies’ fifth-leading scorer last year with an average of 8.4 points per game, Samuels fought through the pain and fired up 178 three-pointers, making 59; each is the fourth-highest single-season total in SMU history. (Samuels hit 51 three-pointers as a freshman in 2007-08 and a school-record 72 as a sophomore, giving her three of the top nine single-season three-pointer totals ever by an SMU player.)

Senior post Alice Severin is in her fourth year as Samuels’ teammate, and third as her roommate. Severin said she never heard Samuels complain about her shoulder, or try to bow out of a road trip, game or practice.

“She never brought it up,” Severin said. “She never complained once. She went out there, fought, did everything that she could to help us win. I didn’t think she could go through that much, go that long, without saying anything, but she’s tough — she’s a warrior.

“I think it made all of us tougher. If she can go through that … if we’re sore one day, we can go through it, too. I think it just made us all want to play harder.”

First-year SMU assistant coach Danny Hughes is the only person who has sat on the same bench with Samuels, and on the opposing bench; prior to a one-year stint last season at St. John’s, Hughes was an assistant coach and interim head coach at Conference USA rival Houston, where he said the scouting report on Samuels included her ability to shoot from long range and her toughness.

“I think that’s a testament to her, and the willpower she has to not make excuses,” Hughes said. “She’s a competitor, and not really knowing the specifics of last year, that is one thing that’s a very good attribute to have. Even with that shoulder bothering her, she was able to impose her will and affect the outcome of games with a team that was headed to postseason play last year. I think that’s just part of being a leader — just learning how to not say anything or make any excuses for anything, and fight your way through it.

“I’ve never heard of that (a shooter playing through torn shoulder labrum), but again, that’s just a testament to her competitive spirit, and what she wanted to bring to her basketball team.”

RE-LOADED

Samuels is best known — by PonyFans and opponents alike — as a long-range shooter. Heading into Saturday’s game at Utah, she has 21 three-pointers this season, giving her 203 buckets from long range in her career. With 34 more this season, she’ll break the all-time SMU record, held by former Mustang guard Andrea Cossey (2000-04).

Samuels has her sights set on the all-time SMU record for three-pointers (photo by SMU athletics).

Head coach Rhonda Rompola said the effects of Samuels’ injury showed up last year in more than merely her shooting.

“We were worried about her taking a severe hit, because at any point when you have any type of damage, especially in your shooting shoulder, you worry about that,” Rompola said. “But where it hindered her, and you wouldn’t really notice it unless you were coaching her, is she struggled making a baseball pass, and at times, when we’re running the basketball and we have an opportunity to get our transition game going, she couldn’t always get the ball where she wanted to.

“I think, sometimes, when you have an injury like that, it wears on a player, and takes a toll a little bit, mentally. But I thought she did a good job of getting through the season, and really not allowing it to affect her, knowing that we’d get it taken care of. But knowing that she had a three-month rehab shows that there was some extensive damage in there.”

Samuels underwent surgery on her shoulder April 6, and spent months rehabilitating the injury, trying to build her strength back up.

“It hurt when I put up a lot (of shots), and after I had the surgery, it hurt when I put up threes, so I had to get up gradually,” Samuels said. “I’m still trying to work out some things with the threes — I can shoot them, but I just need to make sure I get my shoulder all the way up, because it tends to want to drag down sometimes. So I have to pay attention to that, and make sure I get my elbow all the way up, and I find I use more parts of my arm, not even knowing it. I feel so old, rubbing all kinds of creams on there, on my elbow, on my shoulder … I have to warm everything up when I get out there.”

Through 12 games, Samuels is the Mustangs’ third-leading scorer, averaging 9.4 points per game. Not surprisingly, she leads the team in three-pointers attempted (68) and made (21). But Rompola has tweaked Samuels’ role to get her more shots, allowing other players to handle the point guard spot at times so Samuels can slide over to shooting guard, where she can come off screens and have more open shots.

“J.B. (Samuels) is a player that — even though she runs the point for us — we want to run her at the ‘2’ (shooting guard) as much as possible, so we can get her more involved in the offense,” Rompola said. “We’re trying to develop her two-man game, and not just be a shooter, but someone who can create her own shot. She’s the type of player you want to look to reverse the ball to as much as you can to get open shots. You want to make sure you’re picking for her. We’ve got certain players who are our go-to players, offensively, and she’s one of them.

“The beauty of her three-point shot is that she can shoot it deep, and she’s got a very good step-back three that can create space. So we’re still trying to get her to vary her game, and not only rely on the three, because she can vary her game, and she has been working on that, because when you look at her games and (the) shots she has taken, a lot of times she wasn’t taking anything but threes. That’s where we need to vary it — that’s where she’s got to mix up her game, or otherwise, (opposing) players are going to play her one way, and that’s for the three-point shot.”

When senior forward Delisha Wills went down for the year during the preseason with a knee injury, Samuels’ shooting became even more important, as she and her teammates have to pick up for Wills’ lost offensive production.

“I think it will be good,” Severin said of the decision to get Samuels some playing time at shooting guard. “She’ll get more shots, she’ll get more looks, not having to bring the ball up as much. This way, she can run off more screens and look for her shot off the ball, so it should be pretty beneficial.”

Samuels agrees that the move will be helpful, to the team and to her individual production.

“It helps out a lot,” she said. “I want to be able to knock down threes and be a shooter, but I also want to be able to drive in. That’s my main thing now — I’m changing up my game for my senior year, so I can show off some different stuff before I get out of here.

“I’ve got Quel (transfer Raquel Christian) and I’ve got Fil (freshman Alisha Filmore) that can play the point. It allows me to be able to sit on the wing and do some different things. You know, at the point, you’re really passing and trying to set up other people, but when I go over to the two, I get to be set up, come off of screens and be able to shoot.”

GOING OUT ON TOP?

The Mustangs have enjoyed a lot of success in Samuels’ first three seasons. In her sophomore season, SMU won the Conference USA Tournament. Last year, the Mustangs won the C-USA regular-season title. Each year, they advanced to the postseason. Samuels said that remains her top goal for her senior season … but admits she wants to break Cossey’s all-time SMU record for three-pointers. Severin insists Samuels doesn’t bring it up, but said she knows her roommate wants to leave SMU as the standard by which all other three-point shooters will be measured.

SMU coach Rhonda Rompola said that with the season-ending injury to forward Delisha Wills, Samuels is among those players who must pick up the offensive slack (photo by SMU athletics).

“I know it’s important to her,” Severin said. “She’s pretty modest … but she wants to get it.”

“Yeah — I want my name in the books. I want to be up there,” Samuels said. “I don’t keep up with all that stuff — I don’t try to focus on that, but it’s very important to me. I want to get that record and have my name up on the top of that list. Every school I’ve been at — high school, junior high — I’ve had my name in some kind of case or something. I want to do that at SMU, too.”

As is the case for many coaches, individual player statistics are nowhere near the top of Rompola’s priority list. But she admits, she would like to see Samuels climb to the top of the all-time three-pointers list at SMU.

“Would I love to see her get the record? Yeah, because it means she’s hitting a lot of threes,” Rompola said. “We need her to hit shots, and not just threes. With D (Wills) down, I told (the team) — especially our experienced players — everybody has to pick their game up that much more. J.B. didn’t have the best junior year — it was an average year for her. Out of her three years, I think it was her least effective year. But I think she’s ready to come back. We’ve challenged her — she’s got to improve her defense — but she’s got to make a move this year.

“I think she can do that.”