Skip to main content
South Carolina

Mo Kaba feeling consistent improvement one year removed from knee injury

imageby: Jack Veltri08/18/23jacktveltri
mo-kaba-ready-to-make-return-to-field-one-year-after-knee-injury
Mo Kaba (Katie Dugan/GamecockCentral)

Day by day, Mo Kaba is making progress. It’s been a long road for him dating back to last September, but the South Carolina linebacker is starting to see light at the end of the tunnel.

Kaba, who earned a role as a starting linebacker, tore his ACL against Arkansas in the second game of last year. His season came to a swift end and thus began a long recovery process that has lasted roughly a year.

“Every practice I feel improvement,” Kaba said. “The main thing I’m working on now is just conditioning because I realize like everything feels good in my body now. Yes, it’s going to be tough trying to get conditioning while being at training camp, but I just put in a little more extra work.”

For Kaba, he wasn’t going to let it ruin his career. After all, he had already came back once before from an ACL tear as a freshman. So he attacked the rehab process and has now worked his way back onto the field for fall camp.

[VIP Tickets now available: Gamecock Central Kickoff Party 2023!]

“I’m just out there with (Luke) Day doing long, long running work to get my endurance up. Striding across the field, gassers and stuff like that. Ball throws and just getting my endurance to go a long ways instead of short ways, if you get what I’m saying,” he said.

So far in practice, Kaba has felt fine. No signs of feeling held back from the injury that kept him away from the game for so long.

“When I was doing my pass rushes, I just felt like it was natural to do it. There wasn’t no thinking when it came to that,” Kaba said. “The main thing, like I said, to work on is the mental part open field stuff. Just being confident that my knee is good playing off of it.”

[Enter to win two FREE season tickets to football, MBB, WBB, and baseball from 107.5 The Game!]

While it’s one thing to feel good in practice, playing in a game-like setting is a different story.

Leading up to South Carolina’s first scrimmage last Saturday, Kaba felt hesitant to plant off the foot that he tore his knee on. But once he talked himself through it, he felt better about it and was ready to play ball.

“I got like 24 snaps the last scrimmage. Knocked the dust off a little bit,” he said. “And I’m ready for the next scrimmage to see how I feel after that.”

[Garnet Trust: “We Can Build Champions!”]

With the regular season about two weeks away, Kaba is in good shape to be ready to go. But while he was out, other linebackers were getting work in. This could make it a difficult competition for who will start.

“We got depth for sure compared to the last three years I’ve been here. We got deep depth. Everybody knows what they’re doing, everybody’s locked in,” Kaba said. “It’s a good rotation right now. And I feel really good about our group.”

[Get news from GamecockCentral via email]

When asked where he’s been primarily working at in camp, Kaba said he and the other linebackers have been playing at every spot.

“Coach (Clayton) White presses the issue about knowing both sides because you never know what could happen…It’s just making sure that everybody knows what they’re doing just in case something happens,” he added.

Discuss South Carolina football on The Insiders Forum!

You may also like