Kentucky’s return to Rupp Arena didn’t go as planned. ‘There was all kind of weirdness.’

The Kentucky Wildcats returned to Rupp Arena on Wednesday night with outside expectations of walking away with another blowout victory.

Mark Pope’s team — now ranked No. 5 in the country — had won its previous six home games by an average of 32.5 points. Colgate came to town as 31.5-point underdogs with a 2-8 record, listed at No. 271 nationally in the KenPom ratings, the least regarded, by far, of UK’s remaining opponents.

Even with point guards Lamont Butler and Kerr Kriisa sidelined, the Cats were expected to roll.

Roll they did, jumping out to a 17-0 lead less than six minutes into the game.

And then, well, things got a little strange.

“We had some weird energy. There was all kind of weirdness,” Pope said before he was even asked a question following UK’s eventual 78-67 victory. “The 17-0 was a little weird. I think it made it weirder. And then we got weird. But our guys rang the bell the way that they do, and I was really proud of them.”

Four nights after Kentucky stormed back from an 18-point deficit to beat No. 7-ranked Gonzaga in Seattle, this one was supposed to be an appetizer for Saturday’s game against archrival Louisville. It was supposed to be an opportunity for some of the guys who have been relatively buried on UK’s bench to get a little more run than usual. Instead, it was just plain bizarre.

Kentucky’s 17-0 jumpstart was aided by the fact that the Raiders missed their first 10 shots from the field. Chandler Baker finally got Colgate on the board with a 3-pointer nearly seven minutes into the game, and that started an 11-0 run in favor of the Raiders.

Another 3-pointer from Baker a short while later narrowed Kentucky’s lead to 21-16, and then the Cats scored seven straight points, seemingly fighting off the early rally en route to that blowout win. And then came a 10-0 Colgate run.

The strange first half ended with Raiders guard Parker Jones nailing a 3-pointer at the buzzer. The halftime score: Kentucky 38, Colgate 36.

Raiders head coach Matt Langel acknowledged that his switch to a zone after his team fell in a big hole early might have helped Colgate come back. But it wasn’t necessarily a “switch” either.

“It was really our plan from the beginning,” Langel said, explaining that the Raiders set out to play man-to-man defense off their own misses while wanting to try the zone against Kentucky after their own made baskets.

“It’s just, we didn’t make any for a while,” he finished. “And so you couldn’t tell that was the plan for the first part of the game.”

Kentucky went stone cold from the floor following that initial flurry. After taking the 17-0 lead, the Cats missed 11 shots in a row. Seven of those misses were from 3-point range, including five straight clanks from deep over a span of a little more than two minutes.

Koby Brea got hot again — making his first four 3-point attempts and finishing 5-for-8 from deep, with a team-high 17 points — but nobody else in a white jersey could find the bottom of the net. All Cats other than Brea combined to miss their first 13 shots from 3-point range.

Before any of them finally hit, Colgate actually took the lead, a truly odd turn of events about an hour after the Cats had stormed out to that 17-0 advantage.

What the heck happened?

“It’s hard to point to. There could be a whole bunch of things,” said UK’s Andrew Carr, who tallied 11 points and 10 rebounds. “But maybe a little bit of loss of focus and things like that. I don’t know. There’s probably a lot of different things. Of course, they (played) the zone a little bit. We started missing some shots — even at the rim — and, you know, some 3s as well. Didn’t really have as much energy …

“So I’d probably just say a combination of all of those things. And then, you know, a team like that — they see one or two go in, they started making other tougher shots. So credit to them again. But I think it was just a combination of a lot of things.”

Finally, the Cats found their way.

Jaxson Robinson hit back-to-back 3-pointers to put Kentucky ahead for good. Freshman guard Trent Noah then buried another 3 — as Pope stood behind him, imploring Noah to feed the post instead — and Otega Oweh hit yet another 3-pointer after that. A 12-0 run for the Cats.

Kentucky’s lead reached 18 in the final minutes before Colgate made the final score more respectable.

Jones, who led the Raiders with 17 points, provided an example for just how out of place Colgate had been — leading the fifth-ranked Cats in the second half in Rupp Arena — as he sat on the podium after the game.

“First of all, this is pretty sick,” the sophomore said with delight, scanning the room of reporters seated in front of him. “I’ve never been in a press conference, so this is, like — just kind of high level for me. So I’m sorry if my answer isn’t top level.”

Jones’ answer was just fine.

“I think we were all super ecstatic,” he said of the good vibes in Colgate’s halftime locker room. “I mean, when you play a team like Kentucky, you kind of — at least, personally, I dreamed of it. Like in my backyard, thinking about, like, ‘Parker Jones subs in. And he hits a 3!’ … All this stuff that I think about in my head. And I don’t know, like, being in this environment was really cool and just kind of surreal.”

Langel, who noted when he sat down that Colgate had made the last five NCAA Tournament fields and never seen a media presence like Wednesday night, grinned as his player spoke.

The Raiders didn’t get the win, but they sure made things interesting.

On Kentucky’s end, all five starters scored in double figures, led by Brea’s 17, with Oweh and Amari Williams tallying 15 apiece and Carr and Robinson putting up 11 each. Noah played 11 minutes and Travis Perry got nine, but fellow freshman Collin Chandler played only three — all in the first half — a seemingly good time to get him some extended looks wasted due to the closeness of the game.

Afterward, Pope confirmed that Kriisa, injured in the win over Gonzaga, has already had his foot surgery and offered a more specific timetable for his return. Six weeks on the sidelines. He also said he hoped to have Butler, who missed his second straight game with an ankle injury, back on the court soon, possibly in time for Kentucky’s battle with Louisville on Saturday evening.

The Cats fell far short of expectations Wednesday night, but they got the win. In the end, Pope found areas in which to praise his team and places where the Cats will need to do better. This one weird night in Rupp wasn’t necessarily a warning sign. But, boy, was it weird.

“We kind of talked about it in the locker room after. You know, we’re an energy-monitoring, managing team,” Pope said. “The energy on the floor is really important to us. We kind of were having that discussion through the game, trying to try to discover for ourselves — not just why the energy kind of got off. I don’t know if it was the 17-0, maybe it got off. Maybe it was because they made some really good shots. Maybe it was a little fatigue. Maybe it was the rotation difference. Maybe it was not having either of our point guards on the floor.

“Maybe it was just … I don’t know. Usually, it’s all those things somehow, right? You know, a little different lineups on the floor. But that’s this game for us. We’re trying to become like masters of energy, and games like this can help you learn a little bit more about yourself.”

This story was originally published December 12, 2024 at 12:24 AM.

Ben Roberts

Lexington Herald-Leader

859-429-2848

Ben Roberts is the University of Kentucky men’s basketball beat writer for the Lexington Herald-Leader. He has previously specialized in UK basketball recruiting coverage and created and maintained the Next Cats blog. He is a Franklin County native and first joined the Herald-Leader in 2006. Support my work with a digital subscription