Jaland Lowe is OUT against Eastern Illinois after re-injuring his shoulder

Kentucky is back to being without their starting point guard. After the news broke on Thursday that Lowe re-injured his shoulder, first reported by KSR's Jack Pilgrim, Lowe was not a participant in warmups for Friday's game against Eastern Illinois, as expected. Lowe was then ruled out pregame.

"(Jaland) tweaked his shoulder yesterday, so we’re in the process of figuring out what the next step is. He will not play," Mark Pope said on the UK Sports Network. How is Lowe handling yet another setback? "“It's devastating in the sense of you work so hard to give yourself a chance. It’s tough," Pope said. According to Jeff Goodman, Lowe met with doctors today to discuss his future plans regarding the possibility of surgery or working his way back to playing.

At first observation, it seems like Lowe's re-injury with his shoulder wasn't as bad as originally thought. Pope used the word tweak, so it doesn't seem as bad, but it's the re-aggrevation that is worrisome, because young players with shoulder injuries have a tendency to re-aggrevate it. There's isn't more details than what Pope provided, but one could assume there's a good chance Lowe will back at least at some point this season. The best thing for Kentucky is to sit him as long as they can and make sure he's healthy again, because they'll need him later in the season, especially.

Lowe shouldn't xpected to play on Tuesday, either, so Denzel Aberdeen will be asked to step up once again. Aberdeen's performance against Louisville should be encouraging, as he had a career-high 26 points on 10-26 shooting, including 4 threes, adding 7 rebounds, 3 assists, and a steal. Pope didn't elaborate much on an update on Lowe, but Lowe didn't appear to be wearing a sling when he was on the sidelines not participating in pregame warmups. He had the usual warmup gear on, so he still likely had his shoulder brace on under the shirt, which he wore the past two games since returning.

The re-injury part of this could cause problems, which is why surgery is a possibility, but the fact that the injury in practice isn't worse than when he originally injured his shoulder is the best case scenario. There's a chance Lowe could return at some point, but it's unclear when that is. Pope didn't specify, as they're still working and weighing out possible options as to how to deal with the injury,, but he certainly could have injured it worse than tweaking it again.