Andrew Carr battled through back pain to help Kentucky win at Mississippi State

Andrew Carr was a true game-time decision tonight vs. Mississippi State due to back issues, to the point Mark Pope sounded very unsure if Kentucky’s starting forward would play during his conversation with Tom Leach before tipoff. Carr started and played 21 minutes, making several key plays down the stretch to help push Kentucky to the 95-90 win over the No. 14 Bulldogs, their first true road victory of the season.

As the game went on, we learned more about Carr’s injury from the SEC Network’s Dave Neal, who said Carr had been bothered by back problems all week, to the point he couldn’t practice. Afterward, Pope gave some more details about Carr’s back and his decision to play, calling the graduate forward a “warrior” for battling through the pain, which was so bad he couldn’t sit down during timeouts.

“I mean, whoa, geez. Andrew Carr. Like, we’ve talked a lot the last couple of days. 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.

“We sat down and had a long talk yesterday, and he’s feeling so much stress because, he’s like, ‘I don’t want to be out there if I’m not helping the team, but I want to help the team so bad.’ And then you look at him, it’s the second straight game where he can’t sit down during timeouts but he felt — he made it through shootaround today. So we kind of came and said, ‘Let’s go through warm-ups before the game and just see.’ And then he got through warm-ups and he’s like, ‘I think I’m okay. I think I’m okay to try.'”

Carr played 10 minutes in the first half and 11 in the second, finishing with 13 points and six rebounds. With 15:55 to go, he rebounded his own miss and made a three-point play to give Kentucky a 14-point lead. When that lead evaporated to just two points over the next three minutes, he checked back in and made another three-point play to push it back to five. A few minutes later, he rebounded his own miss again and got a putback before checking out for good at the 7:59 mark. Ansley Almonor came in and filled the void, hitting three three-pointers in two minutes.

“It was kind of like, every rotation I’m making eye contact with Brandon Wells, I’m like, ‘What do you [think], can we do more? Do we need to shut it down? Where are we?'” Pope said. “And Andrew ended up making huge plays, man, 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, tough kid, man. He’s a warrior. He’s a really tough kid. He loves our team.”

Amari Williams said the fact that Carr played through the pain showed that the Cats are a lot tougher than many thought heading into tonight.

“That just shows, again, we’re not a soft team. The fact that he’s got back problems, which is serious, and he was still able to go out there and compete, get on the boards, block shots, play defense, it just shows what kind of character he is.”

Hopefully, Carr gets plenty of treatment and the best seat on the plane, bus, and wherever he is for the next three days before Kentucky hosts No. 10 Texas A&M.

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