Injuries derailed the last UK basketball season. Can the Cats avoid a repeat?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Health issues derailed Kentucky's last season; staying healthy remains key.
- Jayden Quaintance and Otega Oweh rehab injuries as UK plans long-term return.
- Jaland Lowe's durability and point guard play will anchor Kentucky's lineup.
The Kentucky basketball roster that’s been assembled for the 2025-26 season should be a legitimate national title contender. If the Wildcats can stay healthy, that is.
UK fans know that’s no guarantee.
The end of the John Calipari era was snakebit by injuries, constant worrying about knees and ankles and backcourts that were always seemingly beat up by March.
That was nothing compared to what Mark Pope dealt with in his first season in charge of the Cats, who managed to advance past the first week of the NCAA Tournament — the first time the program had done that since 2019 — despite limping their way through the end of the season.
If Lamont Butler hadn’t been hampered by a shoulder injury — and if Jaxson Robinson and Kerr Kriisa had been able to play, period — who knows what those Wildcats could have done.
Pope’s hope is that he won’t have to deal with the same what-ifs at the end of this season.
Things aren’t off to the greatest of starts there.
Jayden Quaintance — the Cats’ highest-profile transfer portal addition and a projected NBA lottery pick in 2026 — is still on the mend. That was a known issue for Kentucky, which recruited Quaintance with the knowledge that he’d had surgery for a torn ACL in March and would go into the fall with plenty of questions surrounding his status.
So far, the talk around Quaintance’s rehab has been overwhelmingly positive. The 6-foot-10, 255-pound forward is still not cleared for full-contact drills in practice, but he is back on the court with a basketball in his hands.
Even with the rosy outlook regarding Quaintance’s rehab so far, it’s being stressed behind the scenes that Pope and UK’s staff will be careful with the 18-year-old’s return to play. It’s likely the Cats will be without him for big early games at Louisville (Nov. 11) and against Michigan State (Nov. 18).
He could potentially continue to sit for other marquee matchups. North Carolina (Dec. 2), Gonzaga (Dec. 5) and Indiana (Dec. 13) will all take place before the nine-month anniversary of his surgery date. And the game against St. John’s (Dec. 20) is scheduled for one day after that milestone. The SEC opener will be at Alabama on Jan. 3.
Pope isn’t going to do anything to jeopardize Quaintance’s long-term health — he’s likely to be the UK coach’s first-ever NBA first-round draft pick — and the overall short-term goal will be making sure he’s properly built up and good to go for the stretch run this season.
The UK staff knew Quaintance would be on the shelf for a little while. The more immediate concern has been with Otega Oweh, the team’s leading scorer from last season and a possible preseason All-American selection.
Oweh suffered an injury — since confirmed as turf toe — that put him in a walking boot at the end of summer workouts, and his recovery has stretched into fall practice, but the senior guard has made it clear that it will not affect his status for the start of the season, even saying that he would play in games right now if the schedule had actually begun.
Last season, Oweh led the Cats with 28.3 minutes per game and was one of only two players to start in all 36 games Kentucky played. (Amari Williams was the other.) He’s played in 84 consecutive games as a college player, stretching back to his time at Oklahoma.
While Oweh and Quaintance will continue to be objects of injury speculation until they make full returns to the court, it’s Jaland Lowe who might be the most important Wildcat to keep on the floor this season.
Jaland Lowe’s injury history
Lowe is expected to be UK’s starter at the 1 this season, and while Pope has plenty of intriguing options to back him up, none of those players would be classified as true point guards. That’ll make keeping Lowe in good health a top priority, no matter who pans out behind him.
The junior guard has a good track record of staying on the floor.
Lowe averaged 35.6 minutes per game at Pitt last season, finishing 10th among all power-conference players in that stat. To put that number in perspective, no Kentucky player has logged that many minutes per game since Tyler Ulis (36.8) during the 2015-16 season.
What’s it feel like to be a relatively small guy — Lowe is listed at 6-1 (and a half) and 170 pounds — and play that much at the high-major level?
Lowe chuckled at the question.
“I was a little beat up,” he told the Herald-Leader of his status by the end of last season. “I was a little tired.”
Lowe suffered a concussion in the middle of February but sat out only one game with that injury, playing at least 35 minutes in every appearance for the rest of the season upon his return. He played in all 33 of Pitt’s games as a freshman.
Lowe also dislocated a finger on his shooting hand — right before the start of the 2024-25 season, he told the Herald-Leader — and played through that injury for the entire campaign. He said didn’t want to use that as an excuse for his poor 3-point shooting numbers — 26.6% as a sophomore after hitting 35.2% from deep as a freshman — but it couldn’t have helped.
“That hurt the entire year, just having to play with that,” Lowe said. “But you don’t want to sit out.”
The 21-year-old playmaker also learned quite a bit battling through that season, a disappointing campaign in which Pitt finished 17-15 overall, 8-12 in the ACC and missed the postseason.
In most of those games, he was playing through physical and mental fatigue at the end.
“I felt like that actually helped me a lot, just conditioning wise and knowing how to get through some tougher stints,” he said. “And I don’t complain about it at all. I feel like it was a real blessing for me to go through that and figure things out, with having a lot on my shoulders as a sophomore and trying to be a leader on a team as a sophomore.
“But averaging 35 minutes — you can never complain about playing, so I would never complain about that. I think it helped me get in good condition.”
Lowe sat out some of UK’s early fall workouts with a minor injury, but he was back on the court and leading the Cats on the first morning of the first full preseason practice last month. Pope’s ideal scenario likely calls for Lowe to play closer to 30 minutes per game — perhaps fewer — and find more flow and efficiency during his time on the court.
However many minutes he logs this season, Lowe’s time at Pitt was good preparation.
“You’ve got to lose a lot in situations like those to really learn how to go through moments like that,” he said of performing late in games. “And my sophomore year was definitely about learning and figuring things out in the best way that I could. But going through those moments, physically and mentally, that’s where you fight and become a new version of yourself and figure new things out.”
UK basketball injuries
So, Oweh and Lowe have missed a combined one game over the past two seasons, and Quaintance is on the mend. What about the rest of the Wildcats with college experience?
- Senior guard Denzel Aberdeen was not a key player at Florida — and didn’t always see the court — during his first two seasons there, but he emerged as a top contributor off the bench for the national champions last season. He played in 39 of 40 games, missing just one due to an illness.
- Junior forward Mouhamed Dioubate didn’t play in four games early in his freshman year at Alabama, which had a Final Four team that season. He played in all 37 games as a sophomore and has made 64 consecutive appearances without a DNP going into this season.
- Brandon Garrison — presumed to be the starting center, at least while Quaintance is out — has played in 67 of 68 college games. He had one DNP last season, sitting out a 29-point victory over Georgia State with a minor injury.
- Collin Chandler has had some nagging injuries during his time in Lexington, most of them coming as he attempted to return to action last summer after being away from basketball for two years on a Mormon mission trip. Once Chandler broke into the rotation as a freshman last season, he didn’t sit again, playing in each of UK’s final 18 games.
- Sophomore wing Kam Williams appeared in every game Tulane played last season.
- Sophomore wing Trent Noah played in only 24 of 36 games last season, but the DNPs were due to role, not injury. He appeared in each of UK’s final 15 games and logged at least eight minutes in all five of the Wildcats’ postseason appearances.
- Junior big man Reece Potter missed six games at the beginning of his freshman year with a back injury. He also missed the first two games of last season and two more in the middle of that campaign. He had 56 total appearances at Miami (Ohio).
- And while Andrija Jelavic will be classified as a freshman — along with Braydon Hawthorne, Jasper Johnson and Malachi Moreno — he does have a trackable history. Jelavic appeared in all 26 of his Serbian pro team’s games two years ago and missed three — all at the beginning of the season — in a 30-game schedule for 2024-25.
So, with the exception of Quaintance’s torn ACL, these Cats don’t have much of an injury history to speak of.
That’s not necessarily a sign of things to come. Freak injuries happen, as Butler (shoulder), Kriisa (foot) and Robinson (wrist) can attest. None of those players had notable injury histories before coming to UK either.
Butler had played in 104 consecutive college games before suffering a sprained ankle at Clemson last season. His shoulder injury happened a few weeks later. Butler missed nine total games as a Wildcat and played hurt in others. He had played in 131 of 136 games over four seasons at San Diego State.
Kriisa had appeared in all 58 games he was eligible to play in over the two seasons — at Arizona and West Virginia — immediately preceding his time at Kentucky, where he played in only nine of 36 games.
Of the 68 games Robinson could have played for Pope over his two seasons at BYU, he missed just one due to injury. He had to sit out 12 of 36 games as a Wildcat.
Pope will hope for better luck this time around. Whether or not he gets it will likely be one of the biggest factors in Kentucky’s realistic postseason expectations once March rolls around.
