Florida junior forward Dan Werner said Monday he has been been playing with a fractured finger the past couple of weeks.

And although Werner said he refuses to make excuses, the injured had may help explain his tumbling shooting averages of late.

Werner has been playing with a fractured middle finger on his right hand, and a jammed thumb on he left hand.

Werner said he suffered the fracture in his finger in a 78-68 win against Ole Miss on Jan. 10.

"It was on a rebound,'' he said. "I went for a rebound and used my hand to push off. . . . It's just a little piece (of bone broken). It's not like it's anything serious. There's nothing you can do about it.''

Werner entered the Ole Miss game shooting 50 percent (59-of-118) from the field, and was averaging 10.2 points a game. But over the last five games, Werner is just 11-of-31 from the field and is averaging 5.5 points. He has not had double figures in any of the Gators' games since the injury.

"The first couple of days, when I tried to catch a ball it would be tough,'' Werner said. "As soon as it hit there would be pain or whatever. It got better then it seemed every day it got jammed or something
like that and it hurt. But the last week or so, it's gotten better and really hasn't been that much of an issue.''

Werner scored nine points in Saturday's 94-69 win at Vanderbilt, the most he's scored in two weeks.

"It definitely has gotten better,'' he said. "I can bend it a lot more and stuff. Obviously the first week or so, it was tough. You want to tell yourself it's not going to get any worse but then it gets hit. So I was trying to do stuff with one hand instead of two hands, so it was difficult.''