PHILADELPHIA — All Skyy Clark had to do to show he was fully recovered was open his mouth.
A day after taking an inadvertent elbow to the face, chipping a tooth during his team’s NCAA Tournament opener, the UCLA guard flashed a wide smile to reveal his new crown.
“It feels normal right now,” Clark said Saturday afternoon, only hours after a late-night emergency trip to the dentist, “so I don’t have any complaints.”
That could make Dr. Jeff Goldfine a new kind of March hero.
The dentist saw Clark around midnight. Replacing the tooth started with anesthesia and the removal of a nerve root before shaving what remained of Clark’s tooth to a nub.
Once the crown was inserted, voila.
And what about the tooth fragment that teammate Jack Seidler had dutifully retrieved from the court?
“I just threw that piece away,” Clark said. “[The dentist] said there was no saving the tooth. He just put a temporary on, and after a few weeks, I get to get a new one.”
Already one of the most beloved players on the team, Clark won a new measure of respect for his playing through the pain he experienced after losing the tooth in the second half against UCF.
Said guard Trent Perry: “At the end of the day, he’s a dog. He’ll do everything for us to win.”
Said center Xavier Booker: “Diving on the floor, that’s who Skyy is every day.”
Clark said he knew he had lost the tooth instantly.
“I kind of like put my tongue where my tooth was,” Clark said, “and I felt nothing there and I was like, ‘Yeah, it’s gone.’”
The plan for Clark on Sunday is to wear a mouth guard when the seventh-seeded Bruins face second-seeded UConn in the second round.
It’s going to take a lot more than a little lost enamel to keep him out.
“I feel unlike a lot of people,” Perry said of his teammate, “he doesn’t really get hurt.”
