Jaland Lowe (Vicky Graff Photo)
Point guard Jaland Lowe obviously needs reps with his teammates after missing so much time with his shoulder injury, but coach Mark Pope also cannot risk having him injured in practice.
Lowe’s value was obvious in Kentucky’s win over St. John’s when he re-injured his shoulder in the first half, only to come back in the second half and lead UK to a victory by scoring 13 points in the second half.
Kentucky has had a long break since beating Bellarmine before Christmas, going into Saturday’s SEC opener at Alabama.
“Jaland is looking terrific. We’re just being cautious with him,” Pope said Monday. “We’re trying to keep him — for the rest of the season, we’ll probably keep him around, somewhat limited full-contact reps, but he’s gotten some in over the last two days. He’s looked really good.”
Pope is not going to take chances with Lowe and said he will be on a “contact restriction” the rest of the season to help keep him available for game play.
“I can’t have him out there as a tired body. That’s when he’s most exposed,” Pope said.
Lowe transferred from Pittsburgh to Kentucky for his junior season to be the starting point guard and lead the offense. Yet in UK’s 13 games, he has not started a single game. In the six games he has played, he’s come off the bench in all six.
“We’re trying to limit his contact and exposure so much in practice that it’s — the thinking behind that is like, let’s protect the integrity of the group that we have getting most of the reps in practice to actually be able to go perform on the court, just to give some continuity,” Pope said.
I like that Pope admits what he’s doing might not be right with Lowe. He knows limiting practice work and not starting him could keep him healthier, or could backfire against the Cats.
“We’re going to explore that kind of as we go,” Pope said. “It also gives you a chance to maybe extend his healthy window — which we’re hoping is going to be the entire season — by not being the headline guy at the beginning of a scout. That could be, certainly, something that goes into our thinking about it. So there’s some continuity in those ways.”
However, whether he starts or comes off the bench, opponents are going to pay plenty of attention to Lowe and understand his value to the team.
“Clearly, Jaland Lowe is a massively important key to this team, and we function better on the court when he’s on the floor, for sure,” Pope said. “We’ll kind of continue to weigh and try to strike the right balance with keeping him as healthy and as protected as we can, and also get him on the court as much as we can.”
8 Responses
How are we going to keep other teams players to go along with the "contact restrictions?"
Sometimes you just have to go out and play and not worry about what "might" happen. Injuries are a part of the game and if you take the floor being afraid you or your team is going to get hurt…you and your team will never reach its full potential and miss the joy that could come from reaching it. The best team doesn't always win the championship, often it is the luckiest one and you can't coach that or control it. That is why you tell your players to leave it all out on the floor…EVERY GAME.
We have a badass frontcourt who needs to play that way. JQ and Garrison need to control the paint and the boards. Moreno adds rim protection to the mix. Dioubate and Jelavic add to the tough guy make up. In Chandler, Noah, and Williams, we have elite 3 point shooters who need to play that way. In Lowe and Johnson, we have 2 guards with different skills when combined will make for elite point guard play. In Oweh and Aberdeen, we have two elite downhill shooting guards who need to play to their strengths and not worry about developing their weaknesses…that comes next Summer…everyone needs to adopt that thinking. We need to embrace challenge and not be afraid of failure.
We need to put team success above any individual agenda and share the ball regardless of who does or does not get the glory. We need to play like every game is an elimination game and take the fight to everyone regardless of the ranking or location. We need to DOMINATE SEC play starting in Tuscaloosa and ending with a 16-2 SEC record. If we do that AND win the SEC tourney, we will be a No. 1 seed in the Big Dance and have a shot at No. 9, but nothing short of these accomplishments will get us there. It is time to make the name KENTUCKY strike fear in the heart of our league and the country. Pope is going to have to toughen up a lot too. No more nice guy. No more singing Kumbyah. Rip the opponents' hearts out and eat them for dessert. There can only be one national champion and its name should be KENTUCKY!
I agree 100%. I think Jelavic is better than Moreno and Garrison offensively. He's even better than I thought at rebounds. He will be a key reserve next year. He's getting better and better the playing time isnt showing it because we have JQ back. That will limit his minutes. The way Lowe coming back dips into Noah's minutes. Sounds weird because he's a poiny guard but we swing the lineup with Lowe in the game. Lowe just needs to play hard. If he gets hurt and the season is over then at least he played and didn't quit.
Wagering is going on over which half Lowe runs off the court holding his shoulder Saturday.
Lowe wants to play, there's no hiding from it or he would have the surgery by now.
I believe that.
For today's college basketball we are a very young team. We only have two seniors. Remember that. JQ will be off to the NBA. So 3 guys off this team are gone. We have 11 possibly coming back. Next year sucks to say but we will be night and day better next year. You have to give a coach at least 3 years to see what they will look like with there team. Unfortunately Pope didn't really get a first recruiting class here because we only had one player on the team. This Popes first real recruiting class this year. 4 freshman 4 sophomores and 4 juniors. Can all come back next year. I really hate talking about it. But dont give up on Pope and his mission. If he wouldn't have went after 8 super seniors his first year it would have been a terrible year. So he did what he had to do to win now. To make everyone happy. This is going to be his worst year here. Because we don't have a bunch of seniors or a handful. College basketball is different now. Freshman are fun but it's almost impossible to win a championship with 5* freshman we done been there and done that from 2009-2024. It doesn't work anymore. It worked more when Cal first got to Kentucky. After NIL and the transfer portal teams are winning championships with senior led teams. Look at UConn look at Purdue. They had a ton of seniors. The freshman days are done. You can get one or two freshman who can come in and dominate look at this year. Ive never seen a better freshman class. But will the teams wirh these freshman frontliners win the championship? I doubt it. Maybe a ByU type team? They have alot of seniors and to me the best freshman in college basketball AJ. D. It was between BYU and Kentucky and he went to BYU we didn't have enough money left to get him.
Good points there about Pope and the makeup of his first two teams–u are indeed correct that he didn't actually have a "true recruiting class" last year, other than Noah and snagging Chandler from his previous time at BYU, but aside from that, Pope did indeed fill the team with super seniors from a variety of other programs in an effort to WIN NOW. And that recipe worked in a lot of ways. The biggest issue for last year's team was the lack of health all year. How many games last year was the entire roster of players fully healthy and available to play? Only about the first 6 or 7. Starting with the Gonzaga game, there was at least one player out due to injury in every single game the rest of the year. And this year has begun that same way. The St Johns game was the first game where everyone on the roster was "able to play". It's like u have to get to that point first in order to truly contend. The ongoing injury deal just really needs to go away. But I guess at least in Lowe's case it's not going to. We really are going to have to have Lowe healthy enough to at least play 30 mins a game every game in order to have a chance to reach our full potential. You could see in the St Johns game the potential and the possibilities of how good this team could be when u have the whole damn roster available and healthy to play–the roster that was truly recruited and built. The recruiting and the roster that was assembled was not bad–its a matter of people being healthy and having their heads in the game and playing together as a team. On paper, they have much more individual talent than last year, but last year had experience and toughness from their older age that this year's group had not shown up until the last couple of games. I hope that a couple of months from now we will be able to look back at those IU and St Johns games, and say THAT was the week where this team turned their corner and began their run; THATS when the pieces finally came together, got healthy, and got on the same page as a team. That will hopefully be the origin point of this season. Mo-D showed what he is capable of in that IU game–if we could have THAT MO-D every game, we would be VERY tough to beat. Then think about throwing JQ out there with Mo-D, then u are talking about a serious frontcourt, and a serious threat as a team both on the offensive, but especially the DEFENSIVE end. The difference that those two can make for this team by playing together is enormous. Then u have Moreno still as one of your first 6-7 guys available to interchange with them, along with Williams and Aberdeen in the backcourt, and then obviously Lowe staying healthy enough to average AT LEAST 30 mins a game, but we really need him between 30 and 35, honestly. But we will take however much of him that we can get. But you can see when u start looking over the whole roster, and look at the different combinations that are possible to play, why this was a good roster from the start, especially in terms of DEPTH. They have a lot of available bodies, but we gotta keep them healthy. And honestly, I think that this team is MUCH MORE suited to play this new way that Pope has been talking about: as a physical, defensive team rather than as a speedy, fast-paced, 3-pt shooting team. Play to your strengths–whatever they are. Fans will accept whatever the style is as long as you are winning consistently. All we want to see is playing to your team's strengths and trying to capitalize on what they do WELL rather than try to make them play a style that doesn't really suit them–thats what a smart coach does–so I give Pope credit for that. And again, this was not a BAD recruiting class. It's just that, as you stated, Pope did not have an actual "recruiting class" for last year that he could help build this year's team around–thats why Oweh coming back was so huge over the summer, just because of this right here……and Garrison coming back was a help too, especially in terms of just depth, and a little bit of experience, too. He's another available body that u at least have in terms of depth and foul trouble, who has played before. But Oweh coming back makes a huge difference for this team on paper–they could have still been solid without him–but he brings so much experience and a veteran presence psychologically to this team that is kind of irreplaceable. So think about where we would have been during this first third of the season had Oweh not come back! So, yes, in many ways, it does make sense that Year 2 could be a bigger struggle than Year 1 for this recruiting situation–and I agree that in basketball, u DO have to give a coach at least their first 3 years to build their program, build their team, build their recruiting, establish their style and their philosophy, and then by Year 4 start seeing some results from whatever the philosophies and styles might be, and begin passing judgment on those results. People forget that that so-called KING left the cupboard dry here when he bailed out for Chicken Little–we were left with Travis Perry, who decided not to live out every KY kid's dream of wearing the KY uniform, and bail out for truly GREENER pastures elsewhere. (I would be curious to find out how much he is actually playing wherever it is he went to.) But at least Noah stuck around and lived out his KY dream–and he better be glad that he is playing for Pope because he wouldn't have been playing AT ALL FOR THE KING!! But yes, we are way way behind with our recruiting, and that takes a long time to catch up to–this year's class was Pope's first TRUE CLASS–and yes, much of the success for next year will depend on how many people from this team actually return. And I used to get into playing that game for fun–trying to get an idea of what the team next year could look like based on who can still come back, and who probably will come back, but I don't do that anymore because the state of college athletics today forces u to view every single player on the team as they are just on a one-year contract. College bball is honestly a one-and-done game now all-around, because these players now spend only one year on any individual team, then the next year they go somewhere else. It has gotten to where u have to count on THAT happening now, and be pleasantly surprised when any individual decides to return for another year. Like Lowe for instance: it would be easy to sit here and say "hey, Lowe is only a junior, we have him for two years"–but will we? If I was betting money on it, I would have to wager that Lowe would be somewhere else next year–and what's my reasoning for saying that? The answer is "that's just what these guys do". I don't even have one good specific reason for why I would think Lowe would leave, but I could come up with a million for why he MIGHT. These guys don't have any allegiance to KY or any other school, and they're not there because they like Pope as a coach, or because they like his style or system……it is now the minor leagues of the professional game–thats just reality. It's fun to imagine all of those things are going on while the season is going on–and all u can do is hope that the KY experience might rub off on a few guys each year–but it's just not like it used to be. Even as recently as the early CAL years, guys like John Wall and Anthony Davis, and before them Tayshaun Prince and Keith Bogans, were growing up watching the KY's and the other college bball powers on TV, and having a love of the game, and dreaming of playing for one of the best–and that generation and all the ones before them all at least had an appreciation for the tradition and history of the blue-blood programs that played a big role in their motivation for pursuing the dream of bball, and for wanting to play for said-school. Sure, they eventually wanted to reach the NBA, and maybe they would after a couple of years, but the college experience at least meant something to them, and they weren't in such a hurry to go pro that it stopped them from making something out of their time in college. But the new system that is in place now, I mean, where does this leave a program like KY in the long run? Someday, it's probably not going to matter who the coach at KY is anymore, because KY will be 1 of 100 programs who are all on the same level and same stature as each other because of the system that is now in place in college athletics–it is eroding the power, the history, and the tradition of the blue-blood programs. I think that's honestly part of the intent of all of this, and that's why I hate it. I'm not against college athletes having a built-in profit, or compensation, whatever u want to call it–but not at the expense of destroying the history and tradition of a KY or any of the other blue-blood programs. Thankfully, the BBN is always going to be doing its part to keep the KY brand halfway relevant–and that's all we can hope for. But I do worry about a guy like Pope and hope that he is able to navigate his way through what the college game is today, because I don't think that it's going to be easy for anyone. Honestly, it's the players who have all the power now–and in my opinion, it's more than they should have–there should be a balance while still being able to be taken care of. There is a way that it can be done, but the system doesn't want to put in the work to find a good, fair solution. But without a doubt it has changed the face of recruiting going forward for good–and that definitely is a concern right now, and something to watch going fwd, where our current coach is concerned. I would just like to see this year' team come together, find the limits of their true ceiling and potential, and go out there and try to push those up even higher. At least now we have all of the pieces that we actually have available, which provides us a much better chance of doing so!
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