WINSTON-SALEM – Wake Forest has a deep and talented roster but Steve Forbes hasn’t had a full deck of scholarship players a week into practices.

Sophomore forward Marqus Marion has been held out because of a right ankle injury he suffered earlier this month.

“The coaches told me I had a good week and I just kept building off that, and then the ankle injury happened,” Marion said during the program’s on-campus media day Monday. “I kind of practiced through it but I didn’t feel like myself, and I’ve been out ever since.”

Marion missed last week and was out again Monday. He said he was going to see a doctor later Monday and that he felt like his ankle was improving.

Forbes termed the absence as “day-to-day.”

Marion played in 21 games last season but didn’t play double-digit minutes after the Dec. 30 ACC opener against Virginia Tech, and didn’t play in Wake’s last five games of the season. He had a season-high five points twice and had eight rebounds in Wake’s second game of the season last year, against Georgia.

Not that it’s good news when a player is sidelined with an injury, but Marion could at least admit that it’s better to have an ankle injury in September going into October rather than it occurring in November or later.

“I’ve just been trying to look at practice, be vocal on the side and just help my teammates the best way I can do,” he said. “It’s annoying, I don’t even know what it is.”

The other side of this that doesn’t qualify as good news, but is worth noting, is how the Deacons are without a player who’s expected to give rotational minutes.

Forbes said if he had to play a game today — the opener is 35 days away, mind you — he’d play 10 players. This is a deeper roster than the Deacons have had in Forbes’ previous four seasons at the helm.

“I’d play 10 today,” Forbes said. “Now, you’ve gotta remember, some of those guys are going to play more minutes than others. Obviously Hunter (Sallis) and Cameron (Hildreth) and Efton (Reid III) need to be on the floor as much as possible.

“But everybody that’s been practicing would play.”