Mark Pope gives updates on status of injured UK point guards Kerr Kriisa, Lamont Butler
Speaking for the first time about the injury to point guard Kerr Kriisa on Monday night, Kentucky head coach Mark Pope made clear that he expects his veteran backcourt player to be out for a relatively short amount of time.
“We’ll be excited to get him back,” Pope said after heaping praise on Kriisa’s competitive nature. “He’s dealing with the best doctors and performance team in the country, and so we’re expecting him back sooner rather than later.”
UK announced Sunday that Kriisa would be out indefinitely after sustaining a foot injury in a 90-89 overtime victory against Gonzaga the night before. The official announcement from UK also said that Kriisa’s injury is “not considered to be season-ending” and that he would be undergoing surgery soon.
Kriisa suffered the injury midway through the second half of Saturday night’s game. Kriisa took an awkward step while backpedaling with the ball near midcourt, losing control of the ball and then clearly struggling to get back in transition defense due to the pain in his foot.
A couple of seconds after Gonzaga scored on that fast break — taking a 65-59 lead with 8:41 left in regulation — Kriisa fell to the floor near the baseline and had to be helped off the court. He later left the UK bench to go to the locker room, though he did return to the court area and was there to see the Wildcats pull off the overtime victory over the Zags.
Pope recounted that play on his weekly radio show Monday night, saying the team watched the video of Kriisa’s continued effort despite the injury multiple times in a film session after the game.
“One of the great things about athletics — it kind of rips you open and shows the whole world your heart, right? It just does,” Pope said. “And for so many things in our life, we get to prepare for (them), and we get to script them, and we get to think through them and find the ideal response and the correct answer and all the things you want to do. And in this moment — we watched it on film together as a team — but in this moment, Kerr, you know, lands, breaks his foot … and immediately jumps up, hobbles back as fast as he can, and goes straight vertical, trying to save a transition defensive possession.
“And just in that moment, you got to see Kerr Kriisa. You got to see him ripped open, unscripted, just how he’s built and what he’s made of and how much he cares about his team and how much he cares about winning and how much he cares about competing. He didn’t have time to prep for that or think it through, or do whatever. It was just his guts. And it was a really, really special moment for everybody on our team as we watched it over and over, it was a little bit emotional.”
Jaxson Robinson — a 6-foot-6 guard — subbed in for Kriisa as soon as he was injured and played the rest of the second half and overtime without leaving the game, taking on the primary point guard duties during that stretch.
The Wildcats were already without their starting point guard, Lamont Butler, who injured his right ankle in last week’s loss at Clemson and was ruled out of the Gonzaga game by Pope after Saturday’s shootaround.
“We kind of tried to just push it a little bit, and it just wasn’t working,” Pope said of Butler’s activity at that shootaround. “... I do think Lamont is making good progress.”
Pope offered a little more on Butler’s status on his Monday night radio show.
“He’s doing great. He’s dying to get back on the floor,” he said. “He still was not in anything in practice today. But we’re hoping he’s back soon.”
Tom Leach, the host of the show, started to move on to another topic when the coach reached out and grabbed his arm.
“Because we’re running out of point guards right now,” Pope added with a chuckle. “So I’d really like him to be back soon.”
A little later in the show, he referred to Butler’s status as “day to day” and said he was hoping to see him on the court for some basketball activities Tuesday.
“It’s a matter of days,” Pope said. “I would like those days to include a game on Wednesday. We’ll see how it goes.”
Kentucky plays Colgate — the lowest-rated team on the remaining schedule — in Rupp Arena on Wednesday night and will then face Louisville at home Saturday, and Pope implied after the Gonzaga game that he was confident in Robinson’s ability to play the point guard position until the Cats are fully healthy in the backcourt.
Freshman guard Travis Perry also got some unexpected playing time against the Zags, and the nature of Pope’s offense — with everyone utilized as a passer and several players capable of bringing the ball up the court — often blurs the line between positions, which should allow Kentucky to be a dangerous scoring team even without a true point guard on the court.
So far this season, Kriisa has earned praise from his coaches and teammates for his unselfish approach. While he started 93 of 99 games in college — previously playing for Arizona and West Virginia — Kriisa embraced his backup role behind Butler and conveyed a team-first attitude despite getting fewer shots and minutes than he was used to in the past.
Through nine games, Kriisa remains the Wildcats’ leader in assists — with 34 total — despite playing the seventh-most minutes on the team. He also has just nine turnovers this season.
In his first start as a Wildcat on Saturday night, Kriisa had played a season-high 27 minutes before leaving with the injury. He had eight points, four assists and three rebounds in that time. His only turnover against the Zags came on the play in which he was injured.
For the season, Kriisa is averaging 4.4 points, 2.4 rebounds and 3.8 assists in 17.3 minutes per game.
This story was originally published December 9, 2024 at 6:28 PM.
