It came in a loss, but Andrew Carr played his best basketball in weeks

Posted by author February 23, 2025 Basketball

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Saturday night’s result wasn’t what the Wildcats were looking for, but there were positives to take away. One of them is something Kentucky fans have been hoping to see over the last several weeks: Andrew Carr finally had his bounce-back performance post-back injury.

Carr had been dealing with back spasms for a good chunk of the season. He only officially missed one game, but the issues that sparked around the turn of the new year lingered for over a month. Early in the season, we saw just how impactful Carr can be — 17 points against Duke and 19 more against Gonzaga stand out. But that was in the fall. We hadn’t seen that version of Carr since his back injury clearly became too much to handle.

He might not be 100 percent healthy quite yet, but his confidence has absolutely returned. Carr finished with 17 points in Kentucky’s 96-83 loss to No. 4 Alabama, his most since that 19-point outing against the Zags. The fifth-year Wake Forest transfer shot 6-9 from the field (3-5 3PT) while adding six rebounds, two assists, two steals, and one block in 29 minutes — his most playing time since Jan. 4 against Florida. Carr’s three made triples marked a season-high and tied a career-high.

A more aggressive approach was the main talking point of his performance.

“Definitely wanted to come out and be aggressive,” Carr said postgame. “Coming back, that’s what I’ve been trying to focus on.”

“I thought Andrew was really aggressive and playing hard,” Kentucky head coach Mark Pope added. “He’s made huge strides over the last couple of weeks.

To play like this against Alabama was fitting, too. In the first matchup against the Crimson Tide back on Jan. 18, Carr’s bad back hampered his production. That was the first time in the season that his injury was an obvious, notable issue. Carr finished with four points in 18 minutes as he watched Grant Nelson drop a season-high 25 points on the other end. But Nelson was a non-factor in round two with five points and four fouls in just 15 minutes. Carr deserves a lot of the credit for making it happen.

He’s slowly beginning to look like his old self with only a few more regular-season matchups left. His 11-point game earlier this week against Vanderbilt was his best in over a month. Alabama head coach Nate Oats said after the win the scouting report was to let Carr shoot, and while it didn’t influence the final score, he certainly made the Tide pay.

A bulk of Kentucky’s rotation has been playing better and better as the conference schedule has gone along. Amari Williams is on an All-SEC level. The three freshmen are looking like sophomores now. It’s not a collectively perfect outing every single night from everyone, but the improvement is showing throughout the roster.

Add in a healthy Carr and you can see the postseason potential with this Kentucky group whenever Lamont Butler and/or Jaxson Robinson return to the fold.