Mark Pope praises Andrew Carr's 'Herculean effort' in win over Missouri

In Saturday’s regular season finale, Andrew Carr played arguably his best game yet as a Wildcat in Kentucky’s 91-83 road win over Missouri. After dealing with back spams for a bulk of the season, he’s looking like the best version of himself at the perfect time.

Carr posted his third double-double of the season and his first of SEC play against Mizzou, finishing with 16 points (5-8 FG, 2-3 3PT), a season-high 12 rebounds, three assists, two blocks, and one steal in a season-high 34 minutes. The Wake Forest transfer has produced better scoring games than what he did in Columbia, but his overall impact against Missouri was something we had not seen to this point.

We’re only five or six weeks removed from him being too injured to even take the floor.

“I definitely have come a long way. Feeling great,” Carr said postgame. “Was really happy to be able to get out there and feel like I can contribute the way that I want to and the way that I know I can, and the way that the teammates and coaches believe in me that way as well.”

Carr drew a tough defensive assignment too. With Amari Williams matched up against Missouri’s best player, Mark Mitchell, Carr was tasked with handling Josh Gray, a 6-foot-11, 255-pound center. And while Carr did get dunked on by Gray at one point, the game-long head-to-head matchup went in favor of Carr. Gray finished with five points (1-4 FG) and eight rebounds in 22 minutes.

“You talk about a Herculean effort,” Kentucky head coach Mark Pope said of Carr postgame. “He had 12 rebounds and they were contested, violent, physical, combative rebounds.”

“They switched the starting lineup a little bit, bringing Gray in and he’s a big physical guy,” Carr added. “So I knew for me matching up with him, point of emphasis is to be able to keep him off the glass. Really just tried to match his physicality and set the tone early in the game for us. We were able to do that. That helped us defensively. We know we did a really great job early on on the first shots and they scored a lot off of second chance points early in the game. So we knew we had to lock that down and be able to get stops throughout the game.”

It was a great two-way performance from Carr, who hasn’t always looked like his old self since returning from his back injury. He’d been solid, but still inconsistent over the last five games after wiggling back into the starting lineup. But when he’s playing like he did against Missouri (on both ends of the floor), it adds a dangerous layer to Kentucky’s postseason potential.

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