Freshman guard Jai Lucas' status for Wednesday's South Carolina game is up in the air as he nurses a knee injury suffered in the Kentucky game Saturday night.

Lucas went down on a hard foul with 4:51 remaining in the first half, and although he did return and play sparingly in the second half, he did injure the knee.

"I think he's considerably better,'' Florida coach Billy Dononvan said Monday morning. "He's not going to practice today. They were worried a a little bit about maybe a tear in his meniscus, but they don't think that's the case. He didn't have any swelling, but he probably has some bruising on his bone. He  hyperextended his knee. He feels better.''

The Gators will play at South Carolina Wednesday night, but Donovan said he most likely won't know Lucas' status until at least Tuesday.

" Like all these guys, he wants to play on Wednesday,'' Donovan said. "We're probably not going to have a real true feel of whether or not he'll be available until (Tuesday's practice), to see what type of improvement he makes. Right now, he's not going to practice today, we're sitting him out. And that makes it hard for our team because now we're down to eight guys and we really need to do some things in practice the next couple of days to get prepared. We're going to have to kind of do some different things to get these guys ready.''

Lucas is averaging 9.7points and 2.2 assists for the Gators, and has started all 19 games.