Henri Veesaar’s return from missing 2 games marks a big gain for No. 16 Tar Heels

North Carolina’s Henri Veesaar went from barely practicing or working out due to a nagging lower-body injury to playing nearly a full allotment of minutes in his return to action at Syracuse.

“It feels great, it feels much better than it did before,” the 7-footer said after posting 19 points and three blocks in Saturday’s 77-64 road win.

The 16th-ranked Tar Heels desperately need things to stay that way, too.

The junior had missed two straight games alongside freshman star Caleb Wilson, who is out indefinitely with a hand fracture and due to be re-evaluated next week. The uncertainty surrounding both had threatened to throw a season coming off the high of a last-second win against rival Duke two weeks ago into disarray.

Veesaar’s return was a stabilizing step with No. 21 Louisville set to visit Chapel Hill on Monday night.

“It’s easier because he’s a guy that can consistently score in the paint,” UNC coach Hubert Davis said. “He can shoot from 3. He can pass. And there’s a lot of (defensive) attention on him.

Veesaar saw 25:58 of game action, “a little bit more than I wanted to play him,” Davis added. “But he kept saying he felt good. It was nice to have him back in the lineup.”

Veesaar entered as the team’s No. 2 scorer (16.4) and rebounder (9.0), forming a potent frontcourt tandem with Wilson as the leader in both categories and a high-end NBA prospect. But things had gone awry for the Tar Heels since the Duke thriller, first with Wilson suffering his injury in the first half of a Feb. 10 loss at Miami.

Then Veesaar suddenly popped up with an illness as well as what was described only as an injury to a “lower extremity.” He missed last weekend’s home win against a Pittsburgh team near the bottom of the Atlantic Coast Conference standings.

He recovered from the illness but was still out for Tuesday’s loss at N.C. State, with UNC falling by 24 for its most lopsided loss in the longtime rivalry since 1962.

“I feel like it was just kind of something that was kind of nagging, and then just building on that,” Veesaar said. “After Miami, it kind of flared up in that game and I was able to get through that game. But then it felt like we needed to take a little bit of time off for me to get back to the form I need to play at, and just be able to go 100%.”

His first running drills came Wednesday. He did more individual work Thursday. Then Davis said Friday that Veesaar would go through a limited team practice, though he called him questionable for the Orange.

Davis wanted to see how Veesaar responded overnight, then again during warmups. Veesaar ultimately started as he had for his previous 24 games, finishing 9 for 13 from the field with a 3-pointer and three rebounds while being within range of his typical 31-minute average.

“I felt good, it didn’t hurt at all,” he said. “So just being able to do that kind of gave me confidence to play today.”

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AP freelancer Mark Frank in Syracuse, New York, contributed to this report.

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