For the first time since the 2008-09 season, Kentucky Basketball lost to Georgia at home, falling 86-78 on Tuesday night. The Wildcats entered the matchup winning their last 12 matchups, but now sit at 0-2 against Georgia under Mark Pope, while Mike White improves to 3-2 all-time against Kentucky while at Georgia.
Kentucky has continued to navigate a season without three key players with Jaland Lowe (shoulder), Kam Williams (broken foot), and Jayden Quaintance (knee), but has figured out ways to win,
including eight victories in their last nine games prior to losses to Florida on the road and a home defeat to Georgia.
Despite jumping out to an eight-point lead in the first half, the Wildcats then started to slow down when Pope turned to his bench. Kentucky’s backups produced just 8 of the team’s 78 points. Jasper Johnson led the bench with five points, Brandon Garrison added two, Mo Dioubate had one, and Trent Noah scored zero. The bench shot 2-of-12 overall and 1-of-6 from three-point range, playing over a quarter of the team’s total minutes.
Jasper Johnson was -16 in 15 minutes and Trent Noah -13 in 6 minutes, combining as the worst plus-minus on the team. Meanwhile, Georgia’s reserves contributed 29 points, more than a third of the Bulldogs’ total, providing a spark Kentucky could not match.
Pope says that he needs to play the bench more.
“We gotta find a way to get our guys’ minutes down. Probably can’t have Otega (Oweh) at 38 (minutes) and DA (Denzel Aberdeen) at 36 (minutes),” Pope says after the Georgia game. “It’s just ’cause our actual performance suffers as those guys get fatigued.”
The starters played heavy minutes, with only Andrija Jelavic and Malachi Moreno playing under 30, yet the lack of production from the bench left Kentucky unable to sustain its early lead. The loss shows the Wildcats’ ongoing challenge of depth in a season already hampered by injuries and raises questions about how the bench can contribute in high-stakes SEC matchups moving forward.
