AUBURN | It’s been a slow and painful road back for Austin Wiley but Bruce Pearl is definitely seeing progress.

Auburn’s fifth-year head coach is confident the junior center can return to his pre-injury form before too long.

“I’m telling you, it’s going to happen,” said Pearl after Wednesday night’s 79-56 win over Arkansas. “The best thing is he had a hard practice Monday, went as hard as he’s done in months and he got more minutes tonight and got another rotation. He got 13 minutes in there.”

Wiley had four points and four rebounds against the Razorbacks, the most he’s had since returning from a lower leg injury five games ago. He’s played through pain since returning and was favoring his right leg at times against Arkansas.

“I think he did get tangled up one time, and there was some contact to a place where he was a little sore. But I think he's fine,” Pearl said.

Wiley was averaging 10.8 points, and a team-leading 6.1 rebounds and 1.9 blocks per game before missing five games and then returning against Florida Feb. 5. Auburn plays at No. 4 Kentucky Saturday.

“We’ll need him against Kentucky,” Pearl said. “We’ll need his size and his athleticism and his toughness. I’m not sure what happened to him on some of those dunks early. The ball was a little slickery. He gets all those and his confidence really grows, but he was much more mobile tonight."

Kentucky will be without one of its bigs as grad transfer Reid Travis injured his knee Wednesday and is out for approximately two weeks. He’s averaging 11.6 points and 7.1 rebounds per game, and had 17 points and seven rebounds in the Wildcats 82-80 win at Auburn Jan. 19.

But UK will still have plenty of size including forward PJ Washington, who is averaging 14.9 points, 8.0 rebounds and 1.1 block per game.

Auburn enters the the final five conference games of the regular season 18-8 overall and 7-6 in the SEC.

“In this stretch now of now five games left—I looked at this game, Arkansas at home, believe or not, as kind of a game we had to have, because we go to Rupp, we go to Georgia, host Mississippi State—right now they’re playing as well as anybody in the league—go to Alabama, finish it with Tennessee at home,” Pearl said. “Pretty good next five games. So. We’re not going to be celebrating this. We’re going to try to build on it.”

Tip-off at Rupp Arena is scheduled for 12:30 p.m. CT on CBS.