A fight and some free ice cream? The Kentucky Wildcats delivered on a Friday night.
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Game day: No. 8 Kentucky 105, Georgia State 76
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Friday night’s men’s basketball game between Kentucky and Georgia State in Rupp Arena.
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What was supposed to be yet another Kentucky basketball cakewalk looked like it would be a clunker instead. And then all heck broke loose on the Rupp Arena court.
By the end of the night, the Wildcats had their rout. Mark Pope had yet another reason to beam with pride. And UK basketball fans who hung around long enough had a little extra to smile about on the way out.
No. 8-ranked Kentucky defeated Georgia State 105-76 to finish off a four-game homestand and improve to 7-0 on the season. The final margin of victory was pretty much expected — the Cats were 30.5-point favorites — but there was nothing ordinary about the way they got there.
The Panthers kept things close for basically the entire first half.
Kentucky led just 31-29 with five minutes to go until halftime — the Cats struggling once again from 3-point range, committing too many fouls and looking relatively out of sorts — before Ansley Almonor buried a long-range shot to start a 13-0 run. By the end of the flurry — a 17-1 onslaught — UK was up 18, and the whole thing had lasted less than four minutes.
But that isn’t where the blowout began.
Georgia State came out on fire to start the second half, hitting its first four 3-point attempts out of the break and ultimately cutting Kentucky’s lead to 59-53 with more than 13 minutes left. And that’s right around the time that things really started to heat up.
With a 61-53 advantage but no real momentum, UK had possession, and Georgia State freshman forward Clash Peters — while battling Wildcats center Amari Williams for possession near the block — hit the 7-footer with a body check that sent him sprawling to the floor.
A referee on the baseline immediately called a flagrant foul on Peters as players from both teams gravitated toward the spot of contact. UK’s Koby Brea shoved Peters, others jumped in, and Pope bounded across the Rupp court in an attempt at playing peacemaker.
“I was a little slow out there,” he said. “I was nervous about pulling a hammy.”
Pope grabbed Georgia State senior forward Zarique Nutter and guided him away from the skirmish as a Panthers assistant and the referees tried to restore order.
“So I raced out there. And you know, you’re always trying to just remove people from the fray. So I grabbed one of the Georgia State players that was kind of jumping in late,” Pope explained, saying his next reaction was to see where his wife, Lee Anne, who sits behind the UK bench, was at that moment. “Because I’m telling you, like, at one point she could be running on the floor, like, knocking someone out. And I’m like, ‘I cannot have that.’ So that was actually my second thing. I was like, ‘All right, I got this thing taken care of. Make sure Lee Anne is under control.’”
Lee Anne Pope was standing a few feet away during the postgame press conference, smiling and nodding at the joke. “This was actually your favorite game so far,” the coach said to her.
“Lee Anne loves it when it gets salty,” he told the crowd.
Once they started playing basketball again — after a video review that lasted several minutes and resulted in technical fouls for Peters, Nutter, Brea and UK’s Otega Oweh, but no ejections — the Cats rolled.
The Wildcats went on a 10-3 run immediately following the fracas, gained their first 20-point lead of the night within five minutes and ultimately outscored Georgia State 44-17 before the Panthers tallied the final six points of the night.
Pope noted that UK had four “kills” — that’s three consecutive defensive stops — in the first half and zero kills in the second half until the skirmish with 12:37 left on the clock.
“And we had four kills after that,” he said proudly. “I thought our guys did an unbelievable of — you know, as an athlete, as a performer is really what you are, right? — and the way we play, which is so mentally demanding, you can’t get too carried away emotionally. You gotta keep taking all the emotion and funneling back to focus. I thought our guys did a spectacular job of doing that, and at the same time meeting the physicality of the game. I was really proud of our guys. …
“You know, when things got salty, our guys leaned into each other. They looked into each other. They were making eye contact with each other, they were talking to each other. They were backing each other up, and that’s what you want from a team.”
Pope said his players recognized that in the moment, and the feeling of camaraderie carried over into the postgame locker room.
“Some of the guys made that comment, like, ‘Man, it felt good to know that we were all in this together.’ And so all those were good signs,” Pope said. “And I was proud that they kept a lid on it, too. Like, it never became distracting. It became focusing. And that’s the difference between winning and losing. If we can take all the emotion and keep it in a focused place and not a distracted place, it’s really great.”
There were no altercations after that, even when Peters — who had seemingly been ejected in the heat of the moment, one referee making the, “You’re outta here!” gesture and sending him off the court — returned to the action with 4:42 left and the Panthers down 23 points.
The Rupp Arena crowd exploded with boos when he checked into the game and got only louder every time he touched the ball, erupting with cheers when Peters fouled out a couple minutes later.
Georgia State coach Jonas Hayes — the former Georgia Bulldogs standout — saw nothing wrong with the play that ignited the fireworks.
“One of our calling cards is to play a physical brand of basketball, especially in our league,” Hayes said. “I think that’s what carries ourselves in our league. And that play was nothing. I don’t think (there was) anything, I guess, sinister about it. It was just a physical play. Clash is like that every day in practice. And so that’s nothing new. And if you’re not used to that, you can kind of get taken aback.”
Playing with that kind of physicality might be one way opponents try to attack Kentucky’s high-octane offense moving forward — especially in conference play — but Hayes quickly clarified that he didn’t mean to say the Wildcats weren’t used to that kind of play. And whether they were or not, the former Bulldog was impressed by the fight shown in response.
“From that point on, I think they made decisions and made shots,” Hayes said. “And we couldn’t really counter that at the level that they were doing it — that Kentucky was making shots.”
The Cats didn’t make many 3-pointers — their calling card for much of the season — Friday night, but they made just about everything else. UK was 7-for-26 from deep but went 33-for-41 on 2-pointers and connected on 18 of 22 free throws.
Just like Western Kentucky had three nights earlier, Georgia State did everything possible to limit UK’s 3-point looks. WKU succeeded in their game plan — the Cats were 8-for-29 from deep Tuesday night — and so did the Panthers. In both cases, Kentucky won big anyway.
“The shot we wanted them to take — they were making them,” Hayes said “And we tip our caps to ’em. That’s a hell of a team.”
Jaxson Robinson scored 19 points to lead seven Kentucky players who made it to double figures. Lamont Butler had 17 points. Williams scored 14, while Almonor and Oweh added 12 apiece, and Andrew Carr and Brea chipped in with 10 each.
Robinson was 1-for-5 on 3-pointers but made all but one of his nine two-point attempts. Pope jumped into his interview session after the game and brought up a set he introduced to the team about a month ago — one that UK used Friday night to get Robinson open looks inside the arc.
Pope asked Robinson what he thought about the play when he first saw it.
“I was a little iffy about it,” the player said with a grin.
“He hated it!” Pope said. “How do you feel about it now?”
“It’s great,” Robinson said after letting out a big laugh.
“Yep!” Pope responded with glee, walking away and shouting back over his shoulder. “That’s why I get paid the big bucks!”
A few minutes later out on the Rupp Arena court — not far from where he had intervened in the melee — Pope spoke on his postgame radio show. The crowd for that program has been attracting more and more spectators this season, a growing number of UK fans hanging around well after the final buzzer to hear the new coach talk about his team.
On Friday night, hundreds waited in the Rupp stands. Pope, who often stays long after the show goes off the air to sign autographs for whoever sticks around, signed a few during the commercial breaks, but he announced to the crowd that he couldn’t stick around on this night. As a consolation, Pope said, he had left Lee Anne’s credit card at one of the Rupp Arena ice cream stands. He told the fans to stop and get a free cone on their way out.
He wasn’t lying. Within a few minutes, the line at that stand stretched several sections, snaking through the Rupp concourse, more than a hundred folks waiting patiently for their postgame treat.
At the end of a wild night, everybody went home happy.
This story was originally published November 29, 2024 at 11:53 PM.
