Mark Pope raves over Andrew Carr battling back to court for Kentucky: 'He's a warrior'

As No. 8 Kentucky readies for a showdown with No. 11 Texas A&M on Tuesday night, all eyes are on the status of forward Andrew Carr. He’s the team’s leading scoring big man.

He’s also dealing with a back injury that has significantly impacted his ability to practice.

Carr gutted it out in a game against Mississippi State over the weekend, helping Kentucky pull out a key 95-90 victory.

“Jeez, Andrew Carr. We’ve talked a lot the last couple days,” coach Mark Pope said. “He hasn’t practiced, he hasn’t done anything. A ton of credit to Brandon Wells and Randy Towner, our performance team, for even making it possible that he could play.”

On paper, Carr had a pretty good performance. He chipped in 13 points, six rebounds and an assist in the contest. But he also did things that didn’t show up on the state sheet that made a huge impact.

That’s what Kentucky has come to expect from the Wake Forest transfer.

“It was kind of like every rotation I’m making eye contact with Brandon Wells, like, ‘Can we do more? Do we need to shut it down? Where are we?'” Pope said. “And Andrew ended up making huge plays. Not just because he got a couple and-ones, but because he got some guys in foul trouble that really helped us. He’s a tough kid, man. He’s a warrior. He’s a really tough kid. He loves our team.”

Whether Andrew Carr can make the same kind of impact tonight remains to be seen. Back injuries can be notoriously fickle.

Pope even pointed out that Carr has been struggling between timeouts.

But it’s not a question of whether Andrew Carr wants to play. That much is clear. The veteran big man wants to be out there. He’s listed as probable for tonight’s game.

“We sat down and had a long talk yesterday, and he’s feeling so much stress because he’s like, ‘Ah, I don’t want to be out there if I’m not helping the team, but I want to help the team so bad,'” Pope relayed. “Then you look at him, he can’t, it’s the second straight game where he can’t sit down during timeouts. But he felt, he made it through shoot-around today so we kind of came and said let’s go through warmups before the game and just see. Then he got through warmups and he’s like, ‘I think I’m OK to try.'”