Kentucky basketball guard Kerr Kriisa needs surgery. What does his injury mean for UK?

Plenty of good things happened for Kentucky basketball on Saturday night as the Wildcats scored a comeback, top-10 win over Gonzaga in Seattle.

But at least one major drawback resulted from the game for head coach Mark Pope’s team.

On Sunday evening, the UK program announced that fifth-year guard Kerr Kriisa sustained a foot injury during the game that will require surgery.

According to Kentucky, Kriisa will undergo surgery in the coming days. The injury isn’t expected to be season-ending for Kriisa, who previously played at Arizona and West Virginia. Kriisa is considered to be “out indefinitely” for the Wildcats.

The news is a significant blow to Kentucky’s guard depth.

An experienced veteran who has played in 108 career college basketball games, Kriisa has played in all nine of UK’s games this season. He’s averaging 4.4 points and 3.8 assists per game in his first season as a Wildcat, and made his first UK start on Saturday night against Gonzaga.

Kriisa started against the Bulldogs in place of normal starting point guard Lamont Butler, who was out with a right ankle injury.

Kriisa scored eight points against Gonzaga, while dishing out four assists and gathering three rebounds. Kriisa also went over the 1,000-point mark for his college career in the game.

Kriisa left the game with more than eight minutes to go in the second half due to a right foot injury, and didn’t return to the game. After appearing to suffer the injury, Kriisa stepped awkwardly while trying to get back in transition defense and then fell to the floor after trying to contest a Gonzaga basket at the rim.

“Kerr, we’ll go get some imaging as soon as we get back and kind of see where he stands,” Pope said postgame when asked for an injury update on both Butler and Kriisa. “So we’ll see on those guys. I do think Lamont is making good progress. And hopefully Kerr, Kerr is tough as nails so it will take a lot to keep him out.”

Now, we know that Kriisa will miss extended time for the Cats.

With Kriisa now out for a yet-to-be determined amount of time, there are several ways that Pope can fill his role.

Freshman guard Travis Perry — the all-time leading scorer in Kentucky high school boys basketball history — will probably see his name called more frequently as a bench option for the Cats. Perry has played in six games this season, coming off the bench in all of them.

Additionally, the ending to Saturday night’s win over Gonzaga may have given Pope a glimpse into another solution. Fifth-year guard Jaxson Robinson, normally a scoring wing, deputized at point guard late in the second half and in overtime against Gonzaga, following Kriisa’s injury.

And the results were impressive.

Robinson finished with 18 points and five assists to go along with no turnovers. Postgame, Pope joked about how reluctant Robinson has been to play point guard in the past when the duo were together at BYU.

“I’m telling you, he’s special man. What Jax has done the last three or four games, defensively, is breathtaking, and toughness-wise, is incredible. (He) hits an insanely difficult shot in the overtime period to boot. He was really special man,” Pope said of Robinson.

UK, now 8-1 on the season with a pair of top-10 wins on its resume, hosts Colgate at 8 p.m. Wednesday at Rupp Arena.

This story was originally published December 8, 2024 at 5:42 PM.

Cameron Drummond

Lexington Herald-Leader

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Cameron Drummond works as a sports reporter for the Lexington Herald-Leader with a focus on Kentucky men’s basketball recruiting and the UK men’s basketball team, horse racing, soccer and other sports in Central Kentucky. Drummond is a second-generation American who was born and raised in Texas, before graduating from Indiana University. He is a fluent Spanish speaker who previously worked as a community news reporter in Austin, Texas. Support my work with a digital subscription