Mark Pope provides updates on Kam Williams, Jayden Quaintance ahead of Arkansas

Kentucky big man Jayden Quaintance has now missed six-straight games for the Wildcats due to knee swelling after appearing in three games following his debut against St. John's on Dec. 20 in Atlanta. Now, he is expected to miss seven-straight as Kentucky basketball gets ready to head to Fayetteville to take on the Arkansas Razorbacks. As for Kam Williams, he went down with a foot injury against Texas last week and now, the outlook for his return is bleak.

For starters, Pope went ahead and confirmed that barring any last-minute changes, Quaintance will not play against Arkansas on Saturday "unless he gets better," which at this point in the week is very unlikely. Here is what the Kentucky head coach had to say about Quaintance's current situation with his knee swelling:

"He's still dealing with a little bit of swelling and so we're trying to make sure that we get to a great kickoff point. And I wish I could predict how that's going to work right now," Pope said on Quaintance. "He's on full shutdown in terms of his on-court work. We're doing everything we can with the performance team. One of the things that's just an immediate moment challenge is that every day he misses, he loses some of the strength that they worked so hard to develop, the knee protective strength. And so t's a little bit of a complicated bag, but I know his health long term is going to be excellent. It's just in the immediate future we're trying to figure out. He will not play Saturday at Arkansas unless he gets better."

Then, there is Williams who now has a very bleak outlook on having a very small chance of even returning to the court this season after his injury. Here is what Pope had to say on his situation: "Kam will be a while. With his particular medical treatment, it's some place pretty soon he gets to just a pain tolerance. I'd like to make all kinds of jokes on that, but, you know, we'll see. There's maybe an outside, outside, outside chance that Kam could rejoin us at some point the season. We'll see."

That obviously doesn't sound very likely based on Pope's tone, but if you're looking for optimism, at least there is a chance, because soon after his injury, there was not really any hope at all for a return. With Quaintance, Kentucky fans can only hope that the swelling stops soon, because it's only a matter of time with him.