On Monday, injured forward Kenny Wooten tweeted that he'd been fitted for a face-mask that might allow him to return to the court sooner.

Wooten had surgery on Christmas Eve to repair a fractured jaw, and has already missed two games, including the Pac-12 opening loss to Oregon State. The timeline for recovery was expected to be 4-6 weeks, head coach Dana Altman said last month.

Whether or not he'll be back sooner, Altman would not say during his time with media on Wednesday afternoon, but he did confirm that Wooten had been fitted for a face mask.

“I don’t know," he said when asked about the timeline for return. "He did get fitted. We’ll wait and see how that comes through, but he did get fitted the other day. Hopefully it’ll be here. Then it’ll still be the doctor’s decision. We’re not going to go against what the doctors and trainers say."

According to Altman, whenever Wooten returns, he will essentially be able to pick up where he left off. Unlike some injuries which force athletes to be sidelined completely for weeks at a time, Wooten's jaw injury has not interfered with his ability to train.

"He’s running and shooting on his own," Altman said. "That’s good thing about this injury, is that his conditioning won’t suffer. It’s not like a foot or knee injury where you can’t do anything. When he is able to come back after four, five or six weeks, whatever the timetable is, he should be back ready to go."

Wooten had started the team's 11 of 12 games he'd played in prior to injury. An illness forced him to come off the bench against Florida A&M. He'd scored 6.6 points per game along with 4.9 rebounds and 1.6 shot blocks per game in 22.4 minutes of action a night.

Whenever Wooten returns, it will provide a big lift, says sophomore guard Victor Bailey.

“Kenny is a big part of this team," Bailey said. "Having him on the sideline hurts us right now. When he does come back, just him being there, another teammate, having another brother on the court, that will help us.

"That will give us a boost, and he’s a freak of nature. That helps too."

As Altman noted last week, depth has become a major concern — even in practices. Oregon opened the season with 11 scholarship players, but with Wooten out, and Bol Bol and Abu Kigab away from the program, the team has just eight players right now. That's made getting 5-on-5 in challenging, Altman said.

“It’s pretty hard to get it all in with the time period we have and keep everyone fresh," he said. "We have two games coming up, and we need to have fresh legs for the games. So, to get the possessions that we need, it’s a little bit tough. We just don’t have the bodies to go long enough."

The staff will seek practice players to help fill the roster, but even doing that at this juncture can be tough, Altman said.

“We’ve got to get somebody," he said. "If we open up tryouts, it could take two to three weeks before we could get anyone on the floor. We had tryouts earlier and had a couple guys we really wanted, but they didn’t meet the NCAA standards for time and hours and all that.

"The easiest thing is to get athletes off of other teams or guys that are already cleared so they can practice."