Freshman wideout Larry Centers, Jr., will have three pins removed from his broken thumb sometime next week (photo by Webmaster).

Another member of the SMU offense will miss all of the Mustangs’ spring workouts after freshman slot receiver Larry Centers, Jr., had surgery Monday to repair a fracture in his right thumb.

Centers, who is left-handed, suffered the injury when he was working out with some teammates as they prepared for spring ball, which started this week.

“I was running a route, and I put my hand down to try to help keep my balance,” Centers said. “I guess it got in the grass or something, and when it pulled a ligament, the ligament pulled off a piece of the bone.”

Centers had three plastic pins surgically implanted in the thumb, and was told they could be removed in seven to 10 days, meaning sometime next week.

Centers said there was some discussion about the possibility of returning to the field before the end of spring workouts (which end Saturday, April 30), but said the dialog on the subject was short-lived.

“They (doctors) said that if I wanted to be really aggressive about it, there was a chance I could be back for the last week of spring ball, but then they decided to do the safe thing,” he said, “so I’m out (for all of spring practice).”

When he arrived at SMU, Centers was among the smallest players on the roster; the official roster listed him as 5-foot-9 and 160 pounds during the 2010 season, which he redshirted. But following the season, Centers worked out hard in strength coach Mel de Laura’s offseason conditioning program. Wide receivers coach Jeff Reinebold said Centers, who said he is up to 174 pounds, “doesn’t even look like the same guy, he has worked so hard.”

Centers admitted to feeling a measure of frustration after suffering the injury that cost him his first spring workouts.

“I have been working out for three months straight, so yeah — it’s discouraging,” he said. “But it might be a blessing in disguise, too. I’m going to do my mental work at practice and come back stronger than ever.

“There’s no substitute for actually running routes, but I’m going to try to get anything I can out of practice.”

The broken thumb is not the first injury Centers has suffered — he broke a foot and dislocated a shoulder in high school — but he said that he healed a little more quickly than doctors predicted with those injuries, so he said he is encouraged that he can be ready to get back to work quickly after this injury, too.

“They said I can do anything with lifting weights,” he said. “I just can’t catch for three or four more weeks, so to me, that means maybe two weeks.

“I’m going to be smart about it, but I’m definitely going to be ready to get back to work as soon as I can.”