Kentucky Basketball fans are suffering from injury PTSD right now. The Cats can’t seem to catch a break for the last 3 or 4 years. One guy goes down and then another.
Before the Mississippi State game,
news broke that Jayden Quaintance was out with knee swelling, a terrifying phrase for a player recovering from ACL surgery last season.
But on Monday night, Mark Pope finally offered a breath of fresh air.
Jayden Quaintance’s health update provides hope
“JQ, I think there’s much more positive information on him,” Pope revealed. “And so we’ll see over the next (few) days how his situation resolves.”
That came after the news that Jaland Lowe was done for the year. Lowe, who tried to play through the shoulder injury, left the Mississippi State game early, and he
While Quaintance won’t Wednesday against LSU, the tone was drastically different from the somber updates of the past. This is not a player willing to shut it down to try and save any draft stock he has. He wants to help Kentucky win. The swelling appears to be a manageable hiccup rather than a major setback.
Getting Quaintance back is critical because this team is running out of time to gel. Pope was candid about the urgency of the moment.
“There’s so much on the table for us,” Pope said. “We just got to grow, and we got to grow fast.”
For a team trying to stay afloat in the SEC, “growing fast” is a lot easier when your athletic freak of a projected lottery pick is on the floor and not in the training room. If the “positive information” holds, the Cats might have dodged a major bullet for once.
Drew Holbrook has been covering the Cats for over 10 years. In his free time, he enjoys downtime with his family and Premier League soccer. You can find him on X here. Micah 7:7. #UptheAlbion
