The latest update on Lamont Butler doesn’t sound good. Can Kentucky win without him?
There wasn’t much for Mark Pope to feel good about following Kentucky’s 89-79 loss to Arkansas and former UK head coach John Calipari on Saturday night.
Pope’s postgame assessment of Lamont Butler — perhaps the Wildcats’ best player this season, when he’s been healthy — might have foreshadowed more bad feelings in the future.
Butler missed his second consecutive game Saturday, and — just like he had been four days earlier for the Cats’ road trip to Tennessee — he was listed as “out” on the mandatory SEC injury report that night before UK played the Razorbacks.
On Monday night — the eve of UK’s road trip to No. 25 Ole Miss — Butler was once again listed as “out” when the SEC injury report was released.
That designation means Butler had no shot to play whatsoever. The SEC’s new reports allow for teams to put four different percentage designations on players who might not play — 0%, 25%, 50% and 75% — and the fact that UK ruled Butler out of competition a full 24 hours before each of the last three games is not a great sign for his current health.
When asked by the Herald-Leader after Saturday’s loss whether Butler’s status might be more of a long-term concern than a short-term one, Pope offered no assurances that he would be back and healthy anytime soon.
“I just don’t know. I’m not sure,” the UK coach said. “We’re kind of just trying to navigate the space. There’s a lot to it that I’m not going to share, because it’s his stuff. But we’re trying to figure out how to proceed right now. And so, we’ll see. I would tell you more, but we just really, genuinely don’t know yet. So we’ll figure out more in the next couple weeks. I assume, at some point, we’re gonna take another shot at this and see how it goes. And we’ll kind of play it by ear.”
A question about Butler’s status after Kentucky’s upset of Tennessee resulted in another response from Pope that raised more concerns about Butler’s status.
“If and when we get him back, we’re gonna be elated,” he said. “We certainly need him. And in the meantime, guys are gonna step up and compete and fight.”
The “if” attached to that reply was not a word any UK fan wanted to hear regarding the player who Pope has referred to as “the heart and soul” of his first Wildcats team.
Kentucky found a way to win without Butler that night in Knoxville. Four days later in Rupp Arena, his absence was glaring.
UK basketball without Lamont Butler
No one will question Butler’s grit.
He had played in 104 consecutive games — starting 103 of them, all but San Diego State’s senior day two years ago, when he was a junior — before being forced to the sidelines for two games after suffering an ankle injury at Clemson two months ago.
Butler returned from that injury 11 days later and turned in one of the most impressive performances by a UK player in years — a perfect shooting night in a win over Louisville — even though his ankle was still clearly bothering him in that game and the others that followed.
Three weeks ago, Butler suffered a left shoulder injury in a win against Texas A&M — returning to the court to finish out that game — but this ailment has been more debilitating, for both the player and his team.
Butler gutted it out four days later against Alabama — going for 17 points, tying a career high with eight assists and just one turnover in 32 minutes — but Kentucky lost. With a week off to heal, Butler looked completely out of sorts at Vanderbilt, scoring six points with just two assists and a career-high six turnovers. UK lost that game, too. Turnovers were a big reason why.
The Cats decided to play without him three days later in Knoxville and improbably beat the No. 8 Volunteers. Against Arkansas, they weren’t so lucky. That’s three losses in four games heading into a matchup at Ole Miss on Tuesday night.
Kentucky has shown they can win without Butler — the Cats also beat Gonzaga in Seattle in his first December game on the sidelines — but winning consistently could be another matter, especially as opponents start to figure out how best to attack a Kentucky team that is now missing both of its veteran point guards.
Kerr Kriisa suffered a fractured foot in that Gonzaga game and is now eight weeks removed from surgery, with no specific return date in sight. He was also listed as “out” on Monday night’s report ahead of the Ole Miss game.
On Saturday night, the Razorbacks went to work on the Butler-less Wildcats.
Arkansas had been struggling offensively coming into the game, to put it mildly. The Hogs were among the SEC’s worst offensive teams. They hadn’t scored more than 74 points in any of their previous seven league games. They had shot 24.8% from 3-point range over those seven games, never hitting more than nine 3-pointers in any of them.
By halftime Saturday night, the Razorbacks had already connected on nine 3-pointers. They finished the game 13-for-25 from deep, their best performance all season. The metrics — not to mention the eyeballs — said it was Arkansas’ best offensive showing, by far, in SEC play.
How much did the Cats miss Butler?
“I mean, it’s not really offense. It’s defense,” de facto starting point guard Jaxson Robinson said. “We gave up way too many 3s. We had a lot of miscommunication defensively. We weren’t talking like we normally do. And, I mean, you’ve seen how that turned out.”
Not only did Arkansas hit 3-pointers at a higher rate and volume than usual, the Razorbacks absolutely gutted the Cats off the dribble, getting to the basket at will without Butler — regarded as one of the nation’s best perimeter defenders — out there to slow them down.
In addition to that, Calipari’s team took advantage of screening situations, an area in which opposing coaches have singled out Butler for praise in the past. Johnell Davis — one of the most coveted transfers in the country last offseason but a player who has largely disappointed at Arkansas — had his best game of the season, abusing UK off of those screens.
“They posed a bunch of difficult problems for us,” Pope said. “They did a good job getting downhill, getting guys open. They make ball-screen covers with pick-and-pop complicated sometimes. ... They really did a terrific job making shots tonight.”
Part of it was Kentucky’s offense, too, something Robinson later acknowledged.
UK had 14 turnovers to just eight committed by Arkansas, but the Cats actually won the points-off-turnovers battle 13-12. That last stat is misleading, though. Not only did that high turnover count by Kentucky — one of the nation’s best at taking care of the ball when Butler was healthy — cost the Cats possessions, but the way the Hogs pounced on their miscues led to high-impact, momentum-turning plays at the other end.
Arkansas outscored UK 18-5 in fast-break points. And Arkansas scored 10 of those fast-break points directly off of UK turnovers.
“We just have to be better about taking care of the ball,” Robinson said.
Can Mark Pope fix it?
It certainly sounds as if Butler is going to try and give it a go again at some point in the not too distant future, but Pope’s assessment of the situation — and he was a former medical student, remember — implies that he might not be at 100% again this season.
That would obviously be problematic.
But without him on the court at all — and Kriisa still sidelined — the Wildcats would be in trouble, too.
Pope’s comments Saturday night were heavy on acknowledgment that Kentucky would need to find some solutions to this situation, but there don’t seem to be any clear fixes here.
In his opening statement, he made reference to “a complicated stretch” his Cats are enduring, a clear reference to Butler (and Kriisa) being out. Starting power forward Andrew Carr is also dealing with a back injury, which sidelined him from Vanderbilt loss completely, limited him to less than 90 seconds at Tennessee and then just 15 minutes — his second-lowest total this season — against Arkansas.
With the two point guards sidelined, Pope is going with Robinson, Otega Oweh and Koby Brea — three big, off-ball guards — as his starting backcourt. That leaves only Travis Perry and Collin Chandler — two freshmen who played very little in big games before these injuries — as his only subs on the perimeter.
Asked if he had any regrets about his substitution patterns Saturday, the UK coach reflected on it.
“Just trying to figure out this guard rotation right now,” Pope said. “And normally I’ve gone to sub one of these three guards out to start the rotation earlier. There was a high intensity of this game, but it was a little bit slower, pace-wise. And so I thought maybe we could withstand it.
“But I probably needed to start that rotation a little bit earlier. It did feel like we ended up with three tired guys all at the same time, and that’s hard.”
There were grumbles before Pope arrived at the podium that he should have gone zone to stop Arkansas from attacking the paint. He was asked directly about that. Pope politely deflected the notion, pointing to numbers that the Razorbacks had actually fared better — by about 0.15 points per possession, he said — against the zone this season, also noting that they were hitting shots from the perimeter at a high rate Saturday.
Instead of a zone, Pope said he might have been better off taking “a more aggressive posture” and wished he’d “taken more risks” defensively, without elaborating on that point.
“We’re navigating some roster situations right now that have me feeling a little constricted,” he said. “And I probably need to be a little more bold, regardless, and take some more shots at being aggressive.”
Offensively, those turnovers were certainly an issue. Kentucky’s four worst games this season — as far as turnover rate — have all come over the past three weeks, starting with that game against Texas A&M in which Butler suffered his shoulder injury.
Asked whether the turnover problem Saturday was created by Arkansas or Kentucky, the Wildcats’ coach was clear.
“I think it’s us,” he said. “And I’m trying to figure out how to navigate. You know, we have a bunch of guys that are stretching right now to figure out how to play out of position — to make it work. And credit to our guys, they are — man, they’re really stretching. And we will get better at it.
“It’s almost like we’ve started a new season. You know, we’re two games into a new season — a little bit for our team — and we’re going to learn some new ways to attack this. And, we’ll get better at it. And I can help us get better at it.”
Robinson, who has emerged as a vocal leader for this team, shouldered much of the burden after Saturday’s loss. He said he needed to see the game differently while playing as a point guard and do more to get his teammates involved, something he acknowledged has not been a focal point of his game in the past.
But filling in for Butler must be a team effort — on both sides of the ball — and Robinson said his absence can’t be used as an excuse for the communication failures that have been occurring.
“It’s not one person. It’s the entire team,” he said. “Obviously, Lamont is a huge piece of this team. But one person doesn’t define us, and we all know we have to step up and lead and communicate better than we did tonight.
“So all we can do is just go back home, sit on it, think about it, and get better.”
It won’t get any easier. After Ole Miss — the No. 11 defense in the country, according to the KenPom ratings — the Cats will host South Carolina on Saturday afternoon. The Gamecocks are dead last in the SEC — with an 0-9 record in the league — but they’re middle of the pack in the conference in defensive efficiency, entered the week at No. 43 nationally in that category and have a coach, Lamont Paris, who knows how to pull off upsets with lesser talent.
After that comes a rematch with Tennessee, which still ranks No. 1 nationally in defensive efficiency and will surely attack UK differently this time around.
“It’s tough,” Robinson said of finding consistency amid the circumstances. “I mean, we’re asking a lot out of our freshmen — of Collin and TP and Trent (Noah). And then, you know, guys are playing out of position. So, just doing what we can. But we don’t use that as an excuse. And we’ve just got to figure out a way to move past it and win some ball games.”
Chandler has given UK meaningful minutes over the past two games — 15 at Tennessee and 17 against Arkansas — but he has a total of just two points, two rebounds and one assist in that time. Perry played eight minutes against the Hogs — hitting a 3-pointer — and five scoreless minutes against the Vols, and opposing offensive players have attacked the two freshmen in both games.
UK’s starting center, Amari Williams, often quarterbacks the offense in halfcourt situations and even brings the ball up the court for the Cats, who leaned heavily on him down the stretch at Tennessee, with Robinson fighting off cramps while Butler and Kriisa were out.
Williams said Butler’s ability to push the pace and run the Kentucky offense has been missed. Even more noticeable with his absence has been UK’s lack of ball pressure.
With Butler out, Williams said it’s harder to stop teams from getting loose in transition and more difficult to prevent opposing guards from getting the action started out of halfcourt sets.
Williams listed all the ways Butler helps this team, and all the ways they struggle without him.
“You know, we miss him,” he said. “And hopefully he’s gonna be back soon.”
This story was originally published February 3, 2025 at 6:00 AM.
