What’s the latest with Kerr Kriisa? Pope gives an update on injured UK basketball player.
When the subject of conversation has turned to injured point guard Kerr Kriisa in recent days, Kentucky head coach Mark Pope has leaned on some variation of the same joke.
“In my mind, he’s a game-time decision for Saturday,” Pope said at his weekly press conference Thursday morning, before acknowledging the reality of the situation. “But sometimes I live in a little bit of a fantasy land. We’ll see. We’ll see how that goes. You know, this is a major deal, and so it’s going to be — it’ll take some time.”
How much time? Pope hasn’t put a number on it in the past couple of weeks, and his tone Thursday suggested that his injured playmaker won’t be returning to the court particularly soon.
Kriisa, who started 93 of 99 career games for Arizona and West Virginia before coming to Kentucky in the offseason and accepting a backup role, was injured during the second half of the Wildcats’ overtime victory over Gonzaga in Seattle on Dec. 7.
The next day, UK announced that Kriisa would undergo foot surgery and be out of action indefinitely, though the statement made clear that his injury was not expected to be season-ending.
Pope confirmed Dec. 11 that Kriisa had already had his surgery, putting an approximate timetable for his return at six weeks. The 6-foot-3 guard from Estonia was averaging 4.4 points and a team-high 3.8 assists in 17.3 minutes per game at the time of his injury.
The Gonzaga game marked Kriisa’s first start as a Wildcat, with him sliding into the lineup in place of Lamont Butler, who had suffered an ankle injury a few days earlier in a loss at Clemson.
UK was able to complete a comeback win over the Zags with both Butler and Kriisa sidelined — and Jaxson Robinson playing in the point guard role — and then Kentucky defeated Colgate before Butler returned to the court and scored 33 points in a win over Louisville on Dec. 14.
Butler’s performance in that game was legendary — he made all 10 of his shots from the field and went 6-for-6 from 3-point range — but the Cats suffered their second loss of the season a week later, an 85-65 defeat to unranked Ohio State in Madison Square Garden, the team’s worst offensive performance so far coming amid an all-systems failure.
With Butler spending most of that game in foul trouble — and Kriisa still on crutches on the MSG sideline — the Cats failed to get much of anything going offensively. They went 17-for-57 from the floor and 4-for-22 from 3-point range.
Kriisa, when healthy, has the ability to be one of the most electric players in all of college basketball. He was a 42.4% 3-point shooter at West Virginia last season and averaged at least 4.7 assists per game in each of his last three years as a starter before coming to UK.
It’s unlikely that his presence on the court would have led to a different result in the Ohio State game, but the Cats will want a healthy Kriisa back as soon as possible for their run through the SEC, which is the sport’s best league this season, with 10 teams ranked in the latest AP Top 25.
Pope said earlier this week that Kriisa was “doing great” with his rehab work, and the UK coach jokingly asked senior athletic trainer Brandon Wells if he could get the sparkplug point guard back for the SEC opener against No. 6-ranked Florida on Saturday in Rupp Arena.
“That was a hard no,” Pope said on his radio show Monday night.
Earlier that day, Kriisa hobbled across the parking lot between the Wildcat Lodge and the Craft Center, a walking boot covering his foot and lower leg as he carefully navigated the short path on crutches on his way into UK’s practice facility.
With Pope’s original six-week return timeline now halfway through, Kriisa doesn’t appear to be terribly close to a return to competitive basketball. On Thursday, he celebrated his 24th birthday, and Kriisa’s coach said he has remained in good spirits under the tough circumstances.
“He’s been great,” Pope said. “I mean, it was devastating for him, for sure. Like, devastating. And he loves competing so much. And I don’t think his life quite feels right right now without being able to compete. I mean, his life just doesn’t feel right. And so he’s trying to find a way to lose himself in this team in other ways, and it’s going to be an incredible growing experience for him.
“And that’s what we have to make it — an opportunity for him to really grow and learn new ways to do things. And he’s around good people, and he’ll do it.”
After the game against Florida on Saturday, the Cats will play at Georgia (Tuesday) and at No. 17 Mississippi State (Jan. 11) before home games against No. 13 Texas A&M (Jan. 14) and No. 5 Alabama (Jan. 18). Following the Bama game, UK will get a week off until road trips to Vanderbilt (Jan. 25) and Tennessee (Jan. 28), those games coming around the window of Pope’s original six-week timeline.
While the Wildcats wait on Kriisa’s return, there’s little room for error on the court and lots of formidable opponents coming up.
Even with that performance in the Louisville game, Butler has looked a little hampered during games, and he acknowledged this week that his ankle isn’t quite 100 percent at all times, a sign that the injury could linger later into the season.
“It’s on and off,” Butler said. “Some days it feels like 100. Some days it feels 80.”
UK’s starting point guard said he had “no complaints” and that his “adrenaline gets going” during the games, claiming that his ankle shouldn’t affect anything that happens on the court. With Kriisa out, Butler’s main backup has been freshman Travis Perry, who played sparingly — and didn’t play at all in big early games against Duke and Clemson — before the injuries necessitated a more immediate role than originally anticipated.
“TP is going to keep working into these minutes at the point. And he’s going to keep getting more and more comfortable,” Pope said after Perry played a season-high 14 minutes in Tuesday’s win over Brown. “Like, for him right now, he’s actually got so much more to his game than we’re probably seeing in the limited minutes he’s had so far, because he’s still trying to just get over the newness of it. But as he settles in — and he’s going to settle in under fire — but as he settles in, he’s going to be very, very, very serviceable giving us some minutes at the point.”
The competition is about to pick up in a major way, and the Wildcats won’t be at their best until Kriisa is back and healthy enough to make an impact.
“Yeah, we can’t wait to have Kerr back,” Butler said. “He brings a lot of energy for us. He’s just a very talented point guard. And it’s his fifth year, but the four years previous — he’s been great at Arizona, West Virginia — so he’s very experienced. And we definitely need that experience on the court with us.”
This story was originally published January 2, 2025 at 11:02 AM.
