Kentucky Basketball made it five wins in a row on Saturday night, grinding out a 72-63 victory over Ole Miss in its first full game without Kam Williams, who remains sidelined with a broken foot.
It wasn’t the prettiest offensive performance, but the Cats found a way to win, something this group continues to do in conference play.
The first half was especially sloppy on the offensive end, but Kentucky still managed to take a lead into halftime, just the second time that has happened for the Cats in SEC
action. Otega Oweh got into early foul trouble and did not score a field goal in the first half, yet still finished with 23 points, once again showing his ability to impact the game regardless of circumstances.
Denzel Aberdeen had a quieter night after several strong performances, but Kentucky got timely production elsewhere. Jasper Johnson and Collin Chandler provided critical performances, including a dagger three from Chandler with under 40 seconds remaining that pushed the Cats’ lead to six and sealed the win.
It was also a return game for former Wildcat Travis Perry, the Kentucky high school all-time scoring leader! Perry struggled as he went scoreless in 10 minutes of play.
A huge win for the Cats as they are about to head into a hard week that includes road games at Arkansas and Vandy. It had Pope in such a good mood that he had a fun time with the t-shirt cannon after the win.
Check out what Mark Pope and his players had to say after the game!
Mark Pope
Q Coach, at the beginning of the game and throughout the first half, it wasn’t pretty on offense. Through SEC play, you guys were actually leading the conference in three-point percentage. Threes weren’t falling. But your team found a way to fight back. Mo gets it going in the second half. What does it say about your team despite the injuries, despite the slow start, that they just keep fighting back?
MARK POPE: I actually thought the first half was incredible. What, has it been a month since we had a lead at the end of the half? I thought it was amazing. I will take that every time. Mississippi, Chris is a great coach, he does an unbelievable job of mucking up the game. Just mucking it up. It hurt us that O was on the bench for a lot of the first half for sure. But then Trent came and gave us up great run. I thought Jasper was, again, great tonight. When you play a team like that, that switches and is so physical and gapped you up and really game plan. They really, really game plan. He does a great job game planning. You just understand that it’s going to be a mucky-muck game and is not really about fixing and making it beautiful. It’s about, can you keep your mentality focused even though through the frustration. I think our guys did a good job doing that.
Q Mark, with Kam obviously out for a prolonged period of time. Has there been any more discussions the last couple days about Braden Hawthorne and possibly burning that redshirt and is that a possibility from here on out?
MARK POPE: It’s something that has certainly been in discussion. There’s so many dynamics there. Most importantly right now is he healthy. You can’t burn the redshirt right now because he’s not healthy. But certainly, he is an incredibly talented player that could really help us down the road, we will see. He’s got a good healthy first though.
Q Coach, entering the season, Otega was met with all of the expectations in the world and kinda fell short for the first half of the season so far. Second half, 7 of the last 11 games, 20 point games. What does that say about him as a leader and a player to be able to overcome all that outside noise and just what you think has been that shift for him?
MARK POPE: You said that he fell short a little bit in the first half of the season and that he’s been really good in the second half. I appreciate you saying that, that’s the hallmark of this team, that’s what we do. Maybe we have taken on that DNA, right? Listen, like a season is a living, breathing thing. Everybody, even a veteran like Otega is facing new challenge and new dynamics and having to understand the game in a different way. I love learners and I feel like he’s been an amazing learner this season. And that’s hard to do. It’s hard to do as a senior, but man, he’s on a run, Isn’t he? You think about all the frustration he had during the first half tonight. And then he bailed us out a lot in the second half and was terrific. So, I’m really proud of him.
Q Mark, I think it’s safe to say that for most people, Jasper’s season hasn’t looked exactly how he maybe expected it to going into the year. There’s a point in the first half where he kind of creative that 8-0 run for you guys with all 8 points. What can you say about his ability to be his own spark plug and get this team going.
MARK POPE: I’m not surprised. I mean, that’s who Jasper Johnson is. We keep saying, he’s coming. And he’s getting better and better and better. You know, sometimes we get, sometimes I guess it’s what we have to do as fans. We have to make a permanent evaluation on something in a moment. It’s fun sometimes to see commentary on like, for us especially last month. To see the commentary on the first half of our games and the second half. Because as a fan, whatever just happened right now is like eternal. And you make all of your judgments based on what happened right now. And as coaches, we have this beautiful opportunity to chart the growth and actually that’s what I love about this game and Jasper is in it, man. I’m so proud of him. I keep saying it every single game, he’s playing more and more and more and playing better and better and better and getting more and more and more confident. He’s making some mistakes, but he’s learning from them and he’s a really talented player and he’s on his way. You know, Shai Gilgeous Alexander didn’t start his first 10 games of his freshman season. He actually turned out to be a really good player. Shame on those people that by game 7 said, he’s no good. Because they were wrong. Jasper has got a huge future in this game.
Q Coach, I’m sure you prefer a bit of a bigger win. But it’s another tight game and another tight finish. But what does it say about the team when they make those clutch plays whether it is getting the rebound off missed free throws or making the free throws or getting those stops after figuring out how to win these very, very tight games like you mentioned?
MARK POPE: It’s fun. All of the cardiologists in BBN are going to be so happy because they are going to have so much extra work from this season. But it’s really fun. Big plays are fun, the drama is fun. You think about starting with Malachi misses two free throws and then steps back on the line just a couple of possessions later and makes two and under pressure. You think about Collin Chandler. Unbelievable, really talented really physical player and probably the defensive play of the game was when he took one in the chest the first hit, caught the second move and took one in the chest, caught the third move and took one in the chest. You know, by all accounts would have been a charge. But basically, it was just the time and space of the game. Unbelievable gutsy defensive play and then Mo flies by at a challenge. And we ended up rebounding and airball, right? In a huge moment in the game. DA comes up with a huge defensive rebound. It’s kind of fun to chart the last few minutes of every game because every single one of our guys is making a big play and it makes it fun, man. I talked to our coaches afterwards. I just, you know, these moments actually, if you can just take yourself out of all of the noise around it, this is really special. This is really special what these guys are doing.
Q Mark, just a couple of quick things on some of the injured guys. First, I noticed Jaland wasn’t on the bench with the team today. What was that situation? Secondly, I know pregame you announce that Kam had surgery yesterday. Any chance he returns this season and a time table for that? And third you just mentioned that Braydon is dealing with something, What is the injury that Braydon Hawthorne is dealing with?
MARK POPE: BA’s got a cath. Surgery was perfect yesterday, it was beautiful, we saw all of the imaging. It’s was unbelievable by a world renowned surgeon. And J Lowe is on his way to get surgery with a surgeon we trust in a different part of the country. You know, that our medical crew sent him to. All of those guys are on the mend. I don’t know if Kam will be ready for Tuesday, we’ll see. That was a joke, just in case. I saw everyone jump to their phone, like I gotta Tweet this out. It’s a joke. I can confirm that he will not play on Tuesday.
Q Mark, to go back to finishing games. Obviously, North Carolina, Missouri, the games got away from you. What has changed, where has the team grown? How are they able to do that now?
MARK POPE: I think the guys are little more comfortable with each other. We are staying as simple as we possibly can. Teams are built different ways. We are trying to stay really, really simple so our guys can go play. Sometimes, you have guys that function a little differently where you can trick up the game a million different ways, and they like the little nuance part of it. Our team is actually playmaking team. And so we managed to do it on offense and it defense. It seems like we’ve had a lot of close games right now, which has been really fun. But our players are just stepping up and making big plays, like a three I categorized and then there’s 10 more that were really important plays down the stretch.
Q Mark, kind of a two-part question on Collin. What were you taking when he took that long three right in front of you?
MARK POPE: I was going, shoot it, it’s what we do. He’s an elite level shooter and he loved that little step back. Collin is interesting, he loves the moment, he wants it. He wants the moment. He’s the one who ran up to me at LSU when everything went wrong in the last couple of minutes and is like, I want to throw the pass. And today, two technical free throws that were pretty important, early-ish, kind of tone setting and he said let me go get these. And he wants that shot. You have to be wired a little different to do that. It’s fun to watch him grow. Our guys are growing and it’s really fun to watch him grow. I was like, shoot it, let’s go.
Q Has that come out in him since the beginning of the season, it seems like he’s kind of growing into that?
MARK POPE: All of our guys, man, are getting more comfortable, it’s fun to watch. Guys, be safe.
