PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Skyy Clark’s smile got a glow-up — one shining white front tooth a day after the UCLA guard truly got his teeth punched in during a scrap for a loose ball.
Clark can sink his teeth — all of them — into playing in the second round of the NCAA Tournament on Sunday, when the seventh-seeded Bruins meet No. 2 seed UConn.
“It feels normal right now,” Clark said Saturday as he grinned for cameras. “I don’t have any complaints.”
Clark lost the tooth late in the Bruins’ first-round win on Friday night when he dived for a loose ball and took an elbow to the face from a UCF defender. The tooth went flying and members of the UCLA staff scurried around to try and find it.
UCLA walk-on Jack Seidler retrieved the tooth.
After fighting tooth and nail for the ball, Clark had little time to celebrate the victory. He needed overnight dental surgery to fit him for an emergency temporary crown.
“He had to take the nerve out, take the root out, shave my tooth down to a nub,” Clark said.
Clark, who played at Illinois and Louisville and spent the last two seasons with the Bruins, said he would wear a mouth guard against the Huskies.
“Still go out there and play hard,” Clark said.
As for the old tooth?
“I just threw that piece away,” Clark said. “He said there was no saving it.”
In the locker room after UCLA beat UCF 75-71 — a win that Clark secured when he shook off throbbing pain to sink a free throw — Clark said he was at about a nine on a scale of 10.
He spoke with a lisp, though the new tooth restored his normal way of speaking.
Jeffrey Goldfine, a Philadelphia-area dentist who was worked with college and professional athletes, said he was called back into the office around 10 p.m. Friday night and handled the roughly 90-minute procedure. He had to suture a laceration and place a metal rod in the tooth to build it up around the existing tooth structure left behind, akin to the start of a root canal.
“The last thing we want is for him to be missing a front tooth in the biggest game of his life,” Goldfine said. “If I could get him a new tooth and good to go, that’s what I wanted to do. We want to see him smile while he’s making a shot.”
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AP March Madness bracket: https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-mens-bracket and coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness
