UK’s Otega Oweh has been out with an injury. Here’s when he’ll be back on the court
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Otega Oweh expects to resume full team practices, including five-on-five, next week.
- Turf-toe sidelined Oweh in a walking boot; medical staff cleared a non-surgical timeline.
- Oweh projects game-ready status for Nov. 4 opener, boosting team depth.
The bad news for Kentucky basketball? The Wildcats’ star player, Otega Oweh, has mostly been relegated to the sidelines for the start of preseason practice.
The good news: He won’t be over there much longer.
Oweh suffered a foot injury toward the end of UK’s eight-week summer session. That setback — turf toe, he confirmed — put the senior guard in a walking boot that has limited his activity on the court in the several weeks since the injury occurred.
On Wednesday morning, Oweh met with the Herald-Leader for a conversation about the 2025-26 season, the Cats’ outlook and his own expectations for his final year in college.
He also talked about his injury status.
“I’m great,” said Oweh, who walked without a limp and wore slides, with no protective measures for his injured foot. “I want to speed it up, but we have a process that we have to stay with. But I’ve been doing more and more every single day.”
By this time next week, he expects to be doing just about everything possible on the court.
Kentucky’s first full preseason practice was last Monday — that’s when college teams were allowed to transition into 20 hours of practice per week — and Oweh spent that first week doing individual skill work and running on the side.
By Monday of this week, he said he had returned to the court for individual and most team workouts. That included shooting and defensive drills and physically going over plays. Basically everything except for the Wildcats’ competitive, five-on-five workouts, he said.
Oweh said he’d prefer to be playing at full speed already, but he’s been sticking to the timeline recommended by his medical team. He has the same doctor who treated star Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow for his recent injury, which was also diagnosed as turf toe. Burrow is expected to miss nearly all of the NFL’s regular season, but he had to undergo surgery. Oweh didn’t.
According to the Kentucky player’s timeline, he expects to be back on the court and participating in everything — including five-on-five competition — by next week.
That’s great news for the Wildcats, who have an incredibly deep roster built to compete for a national championship but will be relying on Oweh as perhaps the team’s top individual player. UK’s leading scorer from last season is certain to be a first-team all-SEC selection — and perhaps the league’s preseason player of the year — when those honors are announced later this month.
And while there might be a little catching up to do physically over the next couple of weeks, Oweh’s timeline should have him in tip-top shape for the team’s regular-season opener against Nicholls on Nov. 4.
Players in this situation often talk about the silver lining of such setbacks, pointing to the benefits of watching practice from the sidelines and getting a different perspective on what their team is trying to accomplish.
Oweh grinned at that thought.
“No,” he said. “For me, I need to be out there. But this has been different for me, so I’m trying to look at it in a different way. I’ve been so like, Go! Go! Go! Go!” that now I can sit back and work on the mental side of it. This is a challenge for me. I never missed a game. I never missed practice before. So it’s something that I feel like I needed.”
Oweh was indeed a constant amid a flurry of Kentucky basketball injuries last season. He was one of only two Wildcats to start every game — Amari Williams was the other — and led the team with 28.3 minutes per contest. Dating back to his time at Oklahoma, he’s now played in 84 consecutive college games, and, by his own account, was on the floor for every practice last season.
So he’s been eager to return to the mix with his teammates in preparation for what will be his final college season. The stakes couldn’t be bigger. He wants to win a national championship before he leaves Lexington, and he wants to put himself in a better position for the 2026 NBA draft.
Kentucky will hold its Pro Day event for NBA scouts Tuesday, and Oweh expects to be “active” for that. He also made it clear that if the regular season was here, he’d be playing now.
“If this was like a real season game? I’d have to be out there,” he said. “They couldn’t hold me back.”
Early UK basketball practice impressions
Though he reiterated that he’d rather be out on the court himself, Oweh was able to find one positive about watching parts of practice from the sidelines over the past couple of weeks.
“Now I get to see certain guys, what they do best and what they like to do,” he said. “Maybe if I’m playing on the court, like, I’m not really paying attention to that because I’m so locked in on what I’m doing and how I’m trying to get the team better. But now I can see, ‘All right, Trent Noah — he likes doing this.’ … Just certain things like that.”
It was clear that was little consolation for Oweh, who would’ve preferred to be on the floor himself, building additional chemistry with his new teammates. He did get the bulk of that eight-week summer session — when teams were limited to eight hours of on-court instruction per week — and he’s seen enough to get wide-eyed when talking about the 2025-26 roster.
“Our overall competitive spirit is huge,” Oweh said of the biggest takeaway so far. “In the eight weeks (of summer practice) I can’t count on my fingers how many times we’ve had guys — like, the energy was just up. Every drill that we did, it was like, ‘I’m trying to get a winner.’ No one wants to lose. And you could really tell that it would ruin certain guys’ whole day if they lost that day.
“So you love being a part of teams like that. Because you know that every single time we go on the court — no matter who you play — you know we’re gonna compete.”
Oweh praised the leadership of new point guard Jaland Lowe, who recently said he’d been spending a lot of time with UK’s top returning player on and off the court to build a better rapport before the start of the season.
Mouhamed Dioubate — the Cats’ expected starter at the 4 — drew praise from Oweh for not only his physicality and competitiveness, but also his level of basketball skill, which is expected to be on display this season more than it was over his two years at Alabama.
Several other Cats received glowing reviews from Oweh, who is one of four returning contributors — Collin Chandler, Brandon Garrison and Noah are the others — from last season’s roster. His status as one of the few second-year Wildcats in coach Mark Pope’s system also gives Oweh the authority to compare this team to the 2024-25 squad.
He gave high marks to this roster’s physicality and attention to detail in the early weeks.
“Everyone’s bought in,” Oweh said.
His best example of that: UK associate head coach Alvin Brooks III, who is instrumental in the team’s defensive approach, preached all of last season that the Cats needed to have a “stick hand” when defending the ball — meaning one hand must be extended and up to discourage and/or disrupt a possible shot, blocking off the shooter’s view to the basket — but Brooks’ teachings weren’t always followed.
With this team?
“Every single time, we’ve done it,” Oweh said. “Everyone’s been doing it.”
He added that this UK team will be “night and day” different from a length, physicality and athleticism standpoint. Kentucky’s defense and rebounding should improve as a result.
Oweh also expects these Cats to be terrific 3-point shooters, collectively, even though they don’t have guys like Koby Brea, Jaxson Robinson or Ansley Almonor — all proven, high-volume shooters before they got to UK last year — on the roster. He mentioned outside shooting as one of this team’s biggest strengths.
Perhaps the most glaring takeaway from early practices has been the depth. Even with Oweh there in a limited capacity and projected NBA lottery pick Jayden Quaintance still recovering from a torn ACL — he hasn’t participated in full-contract drills yet — Oweh sees a team that can go more than 10 deep with SEC-level talent.
“It keeps you on your toes for the whole season,” he said. “You always have to perform, because you have someone who could come in and play on any other team — be a starter and get big minutes. So it just keeps you locked in and laser-focused.”
