Jaland Lowe's status is unknown, but Mark Pope says it's Jasper Johnson's time to step up

Early on in Kentucky vs. Mississippi State, it looked like we were headed toward another nightmare. Jaland Lowe tweaked his shoulder less than three minutes in and headed straight to the locker room. Over the next three minutes, Mississippi State took a 12-point lead, prompting boos in Rupp with the 1966 team in the stands. Thankfully, the Cats got up off the mat to beat the Bulldogs 92-68, putting a must-win game under their belt.

That one was big, but there are still 15 games left in the regular season. Is Lowe’s season over? Mark Pope did not have much of an update after the game.

“We’ll know more tomorrow,” Pope told reporters. “He just tweaked his shoulder, so we’ll kind of see how it responds in the morning and see where we are with that.”

Lowe initially injured his shoulder in Kentucky’s Blue-White Game in October. He reaggravated in the first half against St. John’s but was able to return in the second half. He sat out the Bellarmine game on Dec. 23 to rest it, but returned to action vs. Alabama on Jan. 3. Pope said that after the latest scare, Lowe’s family and Kentucky’s staff will evaluate all options to determine the best path forward. So far, Lowe has decided to play through the pain instead of having season-ending surgery.

“I think all options are on the table. And he’ll meet with the doctors tonight, and then we’ll have some — you know, it’s always the next morning, you kind of get a little bit more data and information, just from how it responds, and I think we’ll start the process of making an educated decision. It could be no games, it could be a few games. It could be all the games, you know, it could be any of those things.

“These guys have great futures in basketball, but they’re dying to play right now. And so there’s just a balance, right? You want to protect their future, but you don’t want to steal their present from them. And so, we’ll go through that conversation. We have the best performance team in the world, so they’ll help give great advice.”

With Lowe out, Denzel Aberdeen and Jasper Johnson teamed up to handle point guard duties. The makeshift backcourt has been a struggle at times this year, but tonight, it worked, the Cats finishing with 21 assists to just nine turnovers, which Pope called the stat of the game. He gave special praise to Johnson, whose stats may not jump off the page (5 points), but Pope said it was his best game against a high-major opponent, noting that the freshman was +16 in just 10 minutes.

“I thought Jasper was great tonight,” Pope told Tom Leach. “It’s time, you know. Now, it’s time. It’s time for Jasper to step up and really start making a huge contribution. I thought his force was really good tonight. I thought he made sense of the game when he was in the game. I thought it was solid defensively with his defensive assignment. So that’s a great step for him. I’m really proud of him.”

“He’s got some magic to his game, too,” Pope added. “You know, he solidifies himself kind of in this rotation and gets more comfortable with the general assignments of playing basketball at the college level. Once he crosses that threshold, then all the magic that he actually brings to the game will start to come out. So we have high expectations for him this season. It was a good step forward for him.”

Fingers crossed for good news on Lowe’s shoulder. If not, it’s your time, Jasper Johnson.

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