Wrist Tendon Injury Puts An End To Jaxson Robinson’s Season

Jaxson Robinson will have wrist surgery Wednesday and won’t play again this season. (Vicky Graff Photo)

By LARRY VAUGHT

Watching Auburn dismantle his team 94-78 on Saturday at Rupp Arena was painful for Kentucky coach Mark Pope.

“I know today was brutal. I feel it. You feel it. We’re all probably gonna go home and burn all of our clothes. That’s fine,” Pope told Tom Leach on the Kentucky Radio Network postgame show at Rupp Arena.

It was brutal, especially Pope also knew that Jaxson Robinson, who transferred to UK after spending two years with Pope at BYU, not only missed this game with a right wrist injury but now would be out the rest of the season. Pope said after the game that “we kind of concluded” Friday night that Robinson would go ahead and have surgery.

“He is going Wednesday to the specialist to have surgery on his wrist. He’s got a torn sub sheath to his ECU tendon. So what’s happening is it is slipping out and when he went down, you know, we kind of knew that he was going to need surgery but he just wanted so badly to play,” Pope said.

ECU stands for the extensor carpi ulna’s tendon, one of the major wrist tendons located on the ulnar side of the wrist. It extends from the elbow and inserts into the bone of the wrist below the little finger.

Robinson injured his right wrist during a practice collision before the South Carolina game. He played but often grabbed his wrist during the game when he was 2-for-8 shooting and scored six points. Robinson did not play against Texas, Vanderbilt, and Alabama before returning against Oklahoma. He was 3-for-7 shooting in 12 first-half minutes but then did not play again.

“He rehabbed it and had an injection to try to make it functional.  And then he was doing okay and he went down the first half at Oklahoma.  So it’s in a groove and there’s a sheath around it that holds it in place that is ripped,” Pope said.

“Now it’s coming out of the groove and after the hit it relocated it a little more. There’s just no way that he’s going to be able to play.  The good news is that he will go have the surgery with, literally, the world’s number one surgeon during this particular procedure.

“It’s a three-month till 100 percent full recovery.  He will be good to go the first of June, the end of May, and continue with his great basketball career.”

Robinson was the Big 12 Sixth Man of the Year last season for Pope at BYU and averaged 13 points, 3.5 rebounds and 1.7 assists per game this season while starting 24 games. He had also made 62 3-pointers, second most on the team.

Teammate Koby Brea said it was “unfortunate” that Robinson would be out for the rest of the season.

“Super big loss for us as a team, but more importantly, just thinking about him. He’s an amazing human being, so I hate to see him go down like that and have to play his last game in that last game without even knowing it until recently,” Brea said.

“We’re just going to continue to be there for him. He’s a super important piece to our team. He’s done great things for us, helped us along the way, and he’s going to continue to do that. But most importantly, we’ve just got to be there for him.”

Point guard Lamont Butler, who has been battling a shoulder injury that forced him to miss games, said he would be “praying” for Robinson.

“I think it’s tough to be out for the season at this point, but we’re a resilient team, and I think it’s just a next man up mentality,” Butler said.  “We’re just going to have to step up and step up to the plate and bring our A game every day so we can win games.”