Terrence Clarke returns from lengthy injury in Kentucky’s SEC Tournament opener
Terrence Clarke returned to the basketball court Thursday afternoon in Kentucky’s postseason opener, the freshman guard’s first appearance since late December.
Clarke — a top-10 national recruit in the 2020 class — had been sidelined since Dec. 26 with an injury and was, until recently, expected to miss the remainder of UK’s season. As a player likely to enter his name in this year’s NBA Draft, the injury basically meant that Clarke’s college career was presumed to be finished after just seven games.
Instead, Clarke entered Thursday’s Southeastern Conference Tournament opener against Mississippi State with 13:11 remaining in the first half and the Cats trailing the Bulldogs, 11-6. Clarke immediately set up Dontaie Allen for a three-pointer to get an assist on his first offensive possession of the game.
Clarke made a driving layup with 6:30 left in the first half — his first shot of the game — for his first points since December. He finished with two points and three assists in 10 minutes, but the Cats lost 74-73 to end their season.
UK Coach John Calipari teased Clarke’s return in his pre-tournament press conference Wednesday, and there had been rumblings around the program all week that the five-star freshman might actually make a return at some point in the SEC Tournament.
Calipari said Wednesday that the UK training staff came to him last week with a positive update on Clarke’s condition, and the coach said he wanted to see Clarke go through two days of individual work without limping before he would even consider playing him.
Clarke accomplished that, and Calipari started inserting him into the team’s scrimmages.
“So, he’s had a couple of good days,” he said. “The great thing is for us and for him: one, (he’s) first one on the floor, first one on the bus. He wants to do this for the team, he understands their game. He may not play again. Maybe he does. Maybe he doesn’t. He wants to do it for the team.”
There was ample confusion over Clarke’s injury earlier this year. He originally hurt his ankle against Notre Dame on Dec. 12 and tried to play through the injury. His final appearance came against Louisville on Dec. 26, when Clarke was clearly hobbled and played little in the second half of a 62-59 loss. To that point in the season, he was UK’s second-leading scorer and actually led the team in minutes played heading into the Louisville game.
Clarke was originally expected to miss only a few games, at the most, but his timeline for a return kept getting pushed back, and even Calipari seemed to be getting frustrated with his recovery time.
After Calipari decided not to have Clarke travel with the team to Missouri in early February — his ninth missed game, at that point — he mentioned the freshman’s injury on his postgame radio show.
“After five weeks, you’re still limping? And there’s nothing wrong — there’s no MRI, there’s nothing there,” Calipari said. “But players know their pain, and what their pain threshold is. So if he’s limping around, I’m not going to play him. If he’s able to play? Shoot, maybe we got another player for this weekend.”
Additional scans — performed shortly after those comments — found that Clarke was indeed still injured. Calipari said he would be out at least another four weeks.
“I want to say this, and I need everybody to listen and our fans to listen: I’m not going to be specific about what’s wrong, but he has an injury that he cannot play,” he said.
Calipari said after Thursday’s game that he was proud of Clarke for wanting to attempt a comeback to help out his teammates in a win-or-go-home situation.
“He was fine until he got a little winded. Then there was a play, the ball bounced near him, he had no chance of getting it because he couldn’t even move to go get it,” Calipari said. “That’s when I took him back out. It’s not fair to put him in and then have him make a play that we lose. It was all coming back to effort and intensity at the end anyway.
“I thought he did fine. It’s a heck of a thing that he wanted to try to play to help our team. He knew if we had four games in four days, he was going to be needed.”
This story was originally published March 11, 2021 at 12:19 PM.
