Kentucky has a week between basketball games. Here’s objective No. 1 during that time off.
Following five hard-fought games over a two-week period to start SEC play, the Kentucky Wildcats are getting a little break.
UK’s first season under coach Mark Pope is going better than many expected. The Cats are 14-4 overall and 3-2 in the best conference in college basketball with several wins over high-profile NCAA Tournament teams.
They go into this week at No. 9 in the AP Top 25 poll, their 10th consecutive week inside the top 10. UK hasn’t been ranked that highly for that long over one stretch since the 2016-17 season.
Still, there’s plenty that these Wildcats can be working on during their “bye week” from SEC play, with no midweek matchup on the schedule, their next game coming Saturday at Vanderbilt.
Kentucky’s defense needs improvement. The Cats entered the week at No. 84 nationally in defensive efficiency, according to KenPom, just one spot better than Oklahoma, which has the lowest-rated defense in the 16-team SEC.
UK can get more consistent with its rebounding efforts, a season-long point of emphasis that was once again an area of concern after Saturday’s loss to Alabama. Another problem in that Bama game: the number of free throws surrendered by the Cats, with Pope saying his players will continue “learning the whistle” in the SEC as the coaches teach them how to play more in line with the way referees have been calling fouls.
Yet another topic of conversation after that loss: cutting away from the ball, often the action that makes Pope’s offense hum and another spot the Cats were sometimes lacking in against the Crimson Tide. The UK coach has already said that will be something his team will work on throughout the season. It’s a safe bet that work will continue this week.
But the No. 1 objective for Pope’s Wildcats this week should be pretty clear to anyone who’s been paying attention lately. And it doesn’t have anything to do with X’s and O’s.
“We’ve got to take advantage of it,” Pope said of the SEC bye week after his team’s 102-97 loss to Alabama. “Everybody’s got one, and ours is probably coming at the best time for us, in terms of trying to find a pathway to a little better health for our guys. I didn’t think that was the determining factor of the game tonight, but for our guys to get fresh and to get healthy is going to be probably key number one.”
The official UK injury report hasn’t been terribly long in recent weeks, but the ailments have clearly been impactful on the court, and few, if any, Cats have been playing at 100% health.
▪ Starting forward Andrew Carr has been battling through a back injury that doesn’t seem to be getting any better. That setback has kept Carr out of practice completely for the past couple of weeks, and he’s forced to stand during timeouts and while he’s on the bench to keep his back loose for when he returns to the game.
▪ Starting point guard Lamont Butler was questionable to play against Bama after suffering a left shoulder injury in UK’s win over Texas A&M last week. Butler played Saturday but wore a brace on his shoulder, and the ankle injury that sidelined him for two games last month — the first time in three years that he’d missed a game — is still clearly a bother.
▪ Star reserve Koby Brea — the team’s top 3-point shooter — missed practice two weeks ago and was listed as questionable in UK’s game against Georgia. He did play, but Brea went 2-for-9 from deep that night. He’s shot 6-for-22 on 3-pointers in the four games since popping up on the injury report. Brea was shooting 52.3% on the season before that.
▪ Both of Kentucky’s big men — starting center Amari Williams and backup Brandon Garrison — have been hampered by nagging injuries in recent weeks, though neither has yet to show up on one of the injury reports that are now mandated for SEC games.
▪ And backup point guard Kerr Kriisa — a change-of-pace playmaker with the ability to be one of the most explosive offensive players in the country — remains sidelined after suffering a foot injury in UK’s win over Gonzaga on Dec. 7. There’s no firm timeline for his return.
Kentucky’s tough schedule
That’s the majority of Pope’s rotation that has been stricken by injury this season.
Getting that group healthy — or as healthy as possible — will be crucial this week, because the grind continues soon enough.
Vanderbilt — no longer an SEC pushover — boasts one of the fastest-paced offenses in high-major basketball, and Saturday’s game in Nashville has the makings of another track meet on the court. Three days after that, UK is back on the road at No. 6 Tennessee, which is always one of the most physical teams in the country and once again has an elite defense. Through 18 games, no opponent scored more than 76 points against the Vols (and it was Vandy that accomplished that in a 76-75 win over UT in Memorial Gym on Saturday).
And then comes a return to Rupp for what will be a circus atmosphere: a game against John Calipari and the Arkansas Razorbacks, who are struggling mightily in SEC play but will surely bring their best shot — many of the Hogs’ top contributors were former UK players or recruits — to the Feb. 1 matchup. Three days later: another road game, this time at No. 16 Ole Miss, another team with a smothering defense.
Surviving the SEC schedule this season will be a challenge. And Pope said a couple of days before the Alabama game that his team was already “scratching and clawing to stay alive right now” — not optimal with so many rough-and-tumble games still to come.
Pope said his team could “hopefully make some progress” — health-wise — this week. That comment came before the Bama game, which ended up being Kentucky’s first home loss and sent the Cats walking out of Rupp Arena with a sour taste in their mouths.
It was unfortunate timing for Kentucky’s players. And a repeat of what happened four weeks earlier.
The Cats had 10 days between nonconference games in December — Ohio State on Dec. 21 and Brown on New Year’s Eve — and UK guard Jaxson Robinson said before the Cats played the Buckeyes that he, and others, were looking forward to a little R & R in that stretch.
When asked what he thought the Wildcats could work on the most over those 10 days, the first words out of Robinson’s mouth were these: “Taking care of our bodies. Getting fresh.”
But before that break came, the Cats played their worst game of the season — an 85-65 loss to Ohio State — and that left everyone upset heading into the holidays. When Robinson was asked the day before the Brown game if he was able to get some rest and recharge physically, he laughed.
“To be honest, we’ve been practicing so much — I don’t know if I can tell a difference at this point,” he said. “But the time that we did have off is really good mentally.”
This week should also help in that regard, but the Cats need some physical rest, too, and — with 13 regular-season games, all against teams capable of beating them — there’s unlikely to be nearly as much as they’d like before heading back on the SEC road this weekend.
UK basketball injury report
Of the Cats playing now, Carr’s situation seems the most precarious. The 6-foot-11 forward had perhaps his worst game as a Wildcat against Alabama — four points, a season-low one rebound and four fouls in 18 minutes — and back ailments are obviously tricky. This one has prevented Carr from practicing with the team.
“He’s undergoing every treatment under the sun,” Pope said on his weekly radio show Monday night. “He was with a specialist today and had a new treatment that we’re hopeful about. He’s working hard. We have the best performance team there is. I know about these backs. It’s just hard, man. Backs and bigs are just complicated things. And Andrew is gutting it out.”
The fifth-year college player has still been effective — he made big plays in wins over Mississippi State and Texas A&M, before the loss to Bama — but everyone involved would obviously like to see him improve, from a health standpoint.
“He’s a high IQ guy. He knows his game. He knows where he’s effective. He’s gotten to know us really well,” Pope said of the benefit of Carr being a veteran, perhaps not needing practice as much as others. “(But) it’s not ideal. And he’d be the first to tell you — it’s hard to kind of find rhythm a little bit when you’re just kind of piecing together a day here and a day there. We do have some semblance of confidence that he’s going to improve. So, we’ll see where we go.”
Pope said Butler didn’t do any contact drills in practices between the Texas A&M and Alabama games, due to his shoulder injury. The coach wasn’t even sure if his point guard would play in the hours leading up to tipoff against the Crimson Tide.
Butler did play — and played very well, going for 17 points, eight assists and four rebounds in 32 minutes, earning praise from Bama coach Nate Oats — but he could use a little time off, too. After the Texas A&M game, Pope emphasized that Butler was a “winner” and noted that his playing style — constantly sacrificing his body — would probably lead to more nagging injuries in the future. “He’s going to keep battling and fighting, but it’s probably not the end of him getting beat up a little bit.”
Pope was full of praise again after the Alabama loss. “I thought he gave a really heroic effort and played well, and we need to get him healthy as quick as we can.”
Kriisa, who had surgery on his foot shortly after that Dec. 7 injury, is now past the initial six-week timeline that Pope threw out as an (optimistic) estimate for return in the immediate aftermath of that procedure. The point guard is out of his protective walking boot and was on the Rupp court putting up shots hours before the games last week, but he’s still moving with a limp, and there’s been no updated timeline for his return.
“His recovery so far has been completely predictable and scripted,” Pope said Monday night. “And we’re going to know more in the next few weeks about whether this is going to kind of turn the corner and be on the quicker side or if this is going to be a complicated recovery. So we’re kind of moving into that window where we’re going to get some more information on his recovery.”
As Kriisa continues to work his way back, the other Wildcats will be looking for a little rest.
College teams are mandated by the NCAA to take one day away from basketball activities every week, and Wednesday has typically been Kentucky’s off day this season. The Cats will get a tad more time away this week.
The Herald-Leader was told that UK did not practice Sunday — the day after the Bama loss — and had a light day of workouts Monday. The Cats will have a full practice Tuesday, then get Wednesday off — as usual — before returning to practice Thursday and Friday ahead of Saturday’s game at Vanderbilt.
That’s still a busy week. Just a little less busy than usual.
After the loss Saturday afternoon, UK guard Otega Oweh — one of the few Cats with no reported ailments in recent weeks — nodded along when it was said that it seemed like everyone on the team had something that was at least a little off physically.
That nod was an indication that all the Cats — to varying degrees — are a little dinged up, with plenty of more battles in their future and not a whole lot of time to slow down.
“Yeah, pretty much everybody,” Oweh acknowledged. “I mean, it sucks that we went on the break on a loss. But we just gotta get healthy. That’s really what it is. Because, in this conference, you gotta give it your all, every single possession. You gotta be at 100. So I feel like this break is definitely gonna help us out in getting healthy.”
Next game
No. 9 Kentucky at Vanderbilt
When: 2:30 p.m. EST Saturday
TV: ESPN
Radio: WLAP-AM 630, WBUL-FM 98.1
Records: Kentucky 14-4 (3-2 SEC), Vanderbilt 15-3 (3-2)
Series: Kentucky leads 117-41
Last meeting: Kentucky won 93-77 on March 6, 2024, in Lexington
