Mark Pope says Kerr Kriisa is out of his boot (sometimes), 'making progress' on return

No, Kerr Kriisa will not be playing against Texas A&M on Tuesday, nor will he be taking the floor against Alabama when Nate Oats brings the Crimson Tide to Lexington on Saturday. Maybe not the trip to Nashville to take on Vanderbilt a week later, either. His timeline for return remains firmly up in the air with no clear backstop at this point.

But he’s making progress, says Mark Pope, and we’re taking the little wins when we can get them. Today’s update from the Kentucky head coach can be considered a little win.

Kriisa, out since breaking his foot in the Wildcats’ win out in Seattle over Gonzaga, is out of his boot — for brief periods, at least. That will lead to more physical rehab in the coming weeks, followed by a return-to-play ramp-up.

 “Kerr is out of the boot for at least little segments of the day, which he’s excited about,” Pope said during his call-in radio show Monday evening. “It’s not full-time, but he’ll kind of begin some rehab here in the next couple of weeks, and then it’s just a matter of seeing how fast and cleanly he can progress. So we still don’t really have a timeframe, but we’re making progress on that.”

The updates have been sporadic since Kriisa went down back on Dec. 7, the injury requiring surgery — although it was confirmed at the time “the injury is not considered to be season-ending” by UK.

Pope followed that up by saying ‘Vegas would say somewhere around the six-week period’ in terms of a loose timeline for return, which aligned with Jeff Goodman’s report of 3-6 weeks when he called it a Jones fracture. Kriisa then returned to the weight room on Dec. 17 with the Kentucky head coach then calling it ‘a little bit of a tricky surgery’ where ‘it could respond fast or it could respond slow.’ Since then, Pope has held back on hard dates, and even had a somewhat head-turning response on his long-term status entering SEC play.

“Kerr is doing great. He was in rehab — I actually walked in after practice, he was working hard in rehab, so I hit Brandon Wells pretty hard about this Saturday (Jan. 4 vs. Florida), just seeing if I could get him to (play). That was a hard no,” Pope joked. “So, I don’t know when or if he’s coming back, but apparently he’s definitely not coming back by (Florida) [laughs].”

‘When or if‘ wasn’t what you wanted to hear a little over weeks after surgery. He then followed that up a few days later calling it ‘a major deal’ that is ‘going to take some time.’

After that level of uncertainty, we’ll take any kind of progress we can get when talking about the fifth-year guard, who is averaging 4.4 points, 3.8 assists and 2.4 rebounds in 17.3 minutes per contest across nine games.

We’ll be ready for you when you are, No. 77.