At halftime of the Chicago State game last month, Marquette was up by only eight points despite being favored by more than 20. A few rows back, the Hauser family was dealing with significantly more challenging news: their youngest son Joey’s MRI results, which indicated the need for ankle surgery to repair a cartilage issue from his junior football season.

Dr. Robert Anderson, who also conducted Joey’s foot surgery in August to repair a Jones fracture, did the procedure Monday. Anderson’s previous clients include Kevin Durant, Derek Jeter and Ben Simmons.

“The cartilage injury is on the inside side of Joey’s ankle and the Jones fracture is on the outside of his foot,” Stephanie Hauser said. “So they believe it’s over a long period of time (because) of him overcompensating for an ankle that was not full strength and undue stress on the outside of his foot.”

Hauser’s mother expects Joey’s recovery to last 3-4 months. He should be 100 percent healthy in time for summer workouts.

“The doctor told Coach Wojciechowski yesterday that he could certainly plan on Joey playing in summer league or whatever Coach wanted him to do this summer,” Stephanie Hauser said.

Wojciechowski was there Monday to support Joey.

“It was just great having him there for support,” Stephanie Hauser said. “He’s crossed paths with Dr. Anderson in the past. Dr. Anderson did some surgery on Kyrie Irving when he was at Duke.”

This ankle injury sidelined Joey Hauser for the first half of last season as well. The 6-foot-8 power forward missed 11 of SPASH’s 27 games last season because of injury. Hauser averaged 23.6 points per game when he returned en route to SPASH’s sixth state title in program history. 247Sports ranks Hauser 39th in the class of 2018. He and Brendan Bailey comprise Marquette’s 2018 recruiting class.