Wings All-Star Arike Ogunbowale out for regular season, 1st round of playoffs after hip surgery
If the Dallas Wings want to win a playoff series for the first time since they moved to Texas, they'll have to do it without Arike Ogunbowale.
The Wings All-Star guard will miss the rest of the regular season and the first round of the playoffs after undergoing iliac crescent core muscle aversion repair, basically a surgery on the core muscles around her hip, the team announced on Tuesday.
Arike Ogunbowale underwent a successful Iliac Crest Core Muscle Avulsion Repair today in Philadelphia, PA.
Ogunbowale will miss the rest of the regular season and the team’s upcoming first-round playoff matchup. We will provide further updates at the appropriate time.— Dallas WWWWWings (@DallasWings) August 9, 2022
Ogunbowale last played on Saturday, when she exited a game against the Indiana Fever with what the Wings called a hip injury.
The development is a brutal blow for the Wings, who celebrated their playoff-clinching just a day earlier on Thursday with a win over the New York Liberty. Ogunbowale, a two-time All-Star, averaged team highs in points (19.7) and assists (3.6) per game while shooting 40 percent from the field.
Ogunbowale had already been dealing with an ankle injury that caused her to miss games at the start of August, though the Wings have at least managed to stay afloat without her. The team is on a five-game winning streak, despite missing Ogunbowale for three of those games and part of a fourth.
The Wings currently sit at sixth in the WNBA with a 17-16 record. If the playoffs started today, they would face the third-ranked Connecticut Sun in the first round.
