He’s been ‘Mr. Consistency’ for Kentucky basketball. How can he be even better?
It seems that in just about every postgame press conference this season, Mark Pope has been asked some variation of the same question.
That question centers on Otega Oweh, how he did what he did to help the Kentucky basketball team in that particular game, and — as the season continued — how it is that he keeps on doing it.
Such a question came following UK’s thrilling 106-100 victory over Florida in Rupp Arena three weeks ago.
“It’s interesting, because when you guys talk to him, he’s just the most soft spoken guy ever, isn’t he? But he has a competitive fire in him that burns really, really deep, and what he’s doing this season is just incredible,” Pope said before a mischievous grin appeared on his face.
“Otega is interesting, because Otega breaks some of our rules,” the UK coach continued. “And he’s one of those guys where — from time to time — I just have to close my eyes and look away, and don’t change it, and just accept that this is just Otega being Otega. And he’s done that for us a lot this year. And the contribution he’s making to this team and the way he’s leading and the joy that he brings to our guys is really special.”
On that day, in the Cats’ SEC opener, Florida came into Rupp Arena ranked No. 6 in the country, boasting an undefeated record and fairly quickly put Kentucky in a 26-15 hole.
And then Oweh went off.
Following a 3-pointer by Koby Brea to narrow the deficit to 26-18, Oweh completed an and-one play in transition, then hit a jumper, then — after another 3 from Brea — hit another jumper and then a 3-pointer of his own. That completed a 16-0 run for the Cats, who took a 31-26 lead lickety-split and never trailed again. Oweh was responsible for 10 of the points in that stretch.
After the game, Pope’s comment about Oweh breaking some of the team’s rules was relayed back to Brea for comment. What exactly did the coach mean by that? The fifth-year college player grinned and hesitated, clearly not wanting to criticize his teammate.
“I guess sometimes he might not follow the things that the coaches want, you know,” Brea said, stopping again to think longer about how he wanted to phrase this before starting back up with a smile. “Let’s just say this. We’re a team that plays off two (feet) a lot. And he’s somebody that thrives playing off one. So it might not be what Coach wants, but it works out really well for him.
“So, he does break some rules, but as long as it’s working out for him and us, I think it should be fine.”
A reporter gave Brea a point for diplomacy to go along with the career-high 23 he had just dropped on the Gators that day. It was Oweh who was most responsible for the game-changing run that started UK on its road to victory, but Brea — 7-for-9 from deep against Florida — was the star.
And that’s kind of how it’s gone all season long.
Heading into Saturday’s game at Vanderbilt — and now 18 games into this season — Oweh leads the Wildcats in scoring with 15.7 points per game, and yet he often gets left out of the brightest spotlight after some of the team’s biggest wins.
There was the Florida game. Three weeks before that, Oweh scored 17 points against Louisville, but Lamont Butler’s perfect day in Rupp understandably got all of the attention. A week after the win over the Gators, the Cats scored a huge victory at Mississippi State, with Oweh tallying 15 points and a season-high eight rebounds. But Jaxson Robinson — again, understandably — was the man of the hour after hitting seven 3-pointers and scoring 27 points.
Oweh has led the Cats in scoring just five times, three of those instances coming in UK losses — to Clemson, Ohio State and Alabama — his play often helping to keep Kentucky in the picture but going unheralded afterward.
But he’s been just as big in the team’s biggest wins. The day before the Bama game, coach Nate Oats referred to him as “Mr. Consistency” — a nod of praise to illustrate the fact that Oweh had scored in double figures in every single game to that point. His 21 points against the Crimson Tide last weekend made it 18-for-18.
“I had no idea who Otega was before he committed,” said Butler, who played the previous four years at San Diego State. “And then, after that, (it was) just watching some tape and stuff. And then, playing in the summer, you can see just how much of a dog he is. Defensively, every day, he brings it. Offensively, he’s a load to deal with. Strong, physical, can hit shots. So he definitely impressed me throughout the summer. And I think he’s scored 10-plus in every game. He’s just willing baskets. He’s been great for us all year.”
Pope’s approach to Oweh
Back to Pope’s comment about breaking rules and Brea’s revelation that it was in reference to “playing off two feet”: What exactly does that mean? Freshman guard Travis Perry has offered the best explanation.
“Whenever you get in the lane — or really anywhere — coming to two feet, so you have both feet set, and you can make a play out of that. Instead of playing off one foot, where you have to shoot, pass or do something like that immediately,” Perry said. “Playing off two feet, you have the ability to kind of ground yourself and make a decision later, instead of making a quick decision. And we like to do it so it takes the hope out of the game.
“Like if you’re playing off one foot, you have to hope that something’s going to happen in that split second that you’re moving around in the air. Playing off two feet, you have five seconds, maybe — maybe more — to make a decision. So that’s something that can really expand the game for a team.”
For Oweh, it’s a fine line.
The 6-foot-4, 215-pound guard is so skilled at getting to the basket — and often so creatively successful at finishing there — that UK’s coaches don’t want to hold him back too much from doing what he does so well. But Oweh, like anyone else, can, at times, get a little too confident — or a little too desperate to make a play — and that leads to trouble at the rim.
Asked about this specific dilemma, Pope’s lengthy explanation began with a backstory. He talked about a long-ago problem that needed solving. “I wanted it to be clean and neat and finished and tidy and put a little bow on it. And set it aside so I could move on to the next thing.”
Pope discussed his situation with a BYU administrator, Keith Vorkink, one of the coach’s mentors at his last job. Vorkink offered some sound advice. “We didn’t bring you here to find the resolution. We brought you here to live inside the tension and move forward inside the tension.”
Some issues don’t have clear resolutions, and finding the right approach for Oweh is one of them. Pope created a visual of two walls, with the goal of staying in between those two walls — not overcompensating in either direction — while at same time narrowing those walls to lessen the margin for error and get closer to the desired outcome.
“When you’re trying to do things at an amazingly high level — and you’re really, really digging into the details — you actually probably don’t want to swing too wide either way, because you’re going to lose some of the magic of it,” he said.
“... So there’s times when Otega has got an angle and where he’s gotta go finish off one foot. And he actually made some great plays against Georgia. There’s some times when he races in there and he makes a play off one foot, it’s like, ‘Oh, this was a hard one. We wish we could have that one back.’ And so that’s the decision-making process. The game would lose some beauty if you could forecast it 100% of the time.”
The last thing Pope wants to do is take away that magic portion of Oweh’s game. But it doesn’t mean he can’t tighten some things up. And he already has.
Anyone who watched tape of Oweh’s play at Oklahoma — where he played for the previous two seasons — saw a highly skilled offensive penetrator who didn’t always make quite the right reads at the rim. There were wild attempts and head-scratching decisions.
Those haven’t been as common this season. Oweh is taking more shots at the rim than ever, but he’s still hitting at a higher rate from 2-point range (54.7%) than he did last season (52.0%). He’s also drawing more fouls — 5.3 free throws per game this season, compared to 3.5 last season — and shooting at a considerably higher percentage from the line at UK (76.8%) than he did as a sophomore at Oklahoma (64.3%).
Pope said a major part of Oweh’s growth has been “getting better and better” at making live reads at the rim. According to one metric the coach threw out, Oweh is in the top 7 percentile as far as most efficient players in the country.
“He’s more efficient than he’s ever been before, by far,” Pope said. “And that’s not because he’s only landed on one side hyperbolically, but it’s because he’s narrowing the two walls. He’s still bouncing up against them. There’s still going to be some things like, ‘Ohhhh, I wish I could take that one back.’ But that’s what, essentially, playing off two feet helps you do, is it gives you longer to make a decision. But he’s also really explosive. He can make plays off one foot.
“The right answer is making the right decision between those two things more often. And he’s doing a good job making progress there.” Pope stopped talking there, seemingly finished with the subject.
“Super cool, actually,” he added. “But very frustrating. Like growth is.”
Oweh’s growth at Kentucky
When Pope says that Oweh is breaking team rules, he says it with a smile because knows it’s a difficult adjustment. And, most of all, he knows the junior guard is trying his best to stay between those walls.
“Whenever it’s one on one, I’m gonna go one foot,” Oweh said. “When it’s like a crowd and stuff like that, I’ll go two feet, because that’s when you can make better decisions. But, I mean, it’s hard, because I’m a one-foot jumper. So I just gotta find a balance — just making good decisions, knowing when I can go and jump off one and make a play, or just make a play off two for my teammates. …
“No one’s challenged me like that — the way Coach Pope does. Obviously, previous coaches — I was at Oklahoma, they obviously told me to play off two, stuff like that. But it was a different way of them telling me. And Pope is giving me the leeway to make certain decisions. So I just gotta make the right decision.”
Oweh has appreciated the freedom of playing in Pope’s player-friendly offense. He’s also improved just about everywhere else on the court.
Offensively, he’s doing everything he did at Oklahoma at an even higher level while learning the ins and outs of Pope’s approach.
“I mean, he’s a bucket, man. He just wills buckets in there,” Butler said. “He’s always cutting hard. He’s real physical, so it’s kind of tough to keep him out of the paint. And when he’s hitting shots, it’s just like there’s nothing really you can do.”
Oweh’s 3-point rate is a tad down — 34.9% at UK; 37.7% as a sophomore — but he’s being asked to make that a bigger part of his game, for his own continued growth and to coincide with Kentucky’s preferred style. Oweh shot twice as many 3-pointers in nonconference play this season (36) as he did last season (18).
Elsewhere, his numbers are up across the board. Oweh is on pace for more points, rebounds, assists and steals than he got last season, his turnovers are down — despite more scoring opportunities — and he’s continued to solidify his reputation as a defensive stopper.
Last season, he struggled once the Sooners got to Big 12 play, his averages dipping — some of them drastically — against the better competition. This season, the reverse has been true. Through five games in the SEC — the best league in college basketball — Oweh is averaging 15.0 points (a tad lower than his overall season number) but his rebounding, assist and steal rates are all higher than they were against nonconference teams. He’s also hitting 52.3% of his 2-pointers in SEC play after shooting just 40.4% inside the arc in Big 12 games last season.
His hawkish on-ball defense often leads to points at the other end. The most celebrated example so far: ripping the ball away from Duke star Cooper Flagg and going the other way with it to draw the game-winning free throws in the second week of the season. More recently, Oweh had a late steal-and-dunk — and then a corner 3-pointer — to help ice the win over Louisville.
What was Butler thinking when he saw Oweh flying down the floor on that fast break?
“I knew it was gonna be showtime,” he said. “I knew he was gonna get up there and do something. … He’s just always out there, you know, doing something spectacular.”
The sight of Oweh streaking down the court in transition — often with no defenders anywhere close — has become a regular occurrence this season. He’s capable of highlights in the halfcourt, too. Last week against Texas A&M, there was an Aggie between Oweh and the rim. That meeting ended with perhaps the most thunderous poster dunk of Kentucky’s season.
He had another big slam early in the second half against Alabama last weekend.
“I’m trying to get downhill until someone stops me,” Oweh said of those moments when he gets a head of steam in transition, whether there’s a defender in the way or not. “And if I can go up and dunk it, I’mma dunk it. It’s either gonna be a bucket or a foul. So that’s what I’m thinking.”
He’s smart, too. After the dunk against Alabama — a team that thrives on getting the ball to the baseline and attacking teams that have just scored — Oweh collected his own made dunk and started to hand the ball to a Bama player who was prepared for the quick inbound. Then he stopped and tossed it to the referee instead, a perfectly legal move that gave himself and his teammates a little more time to get back and set on defense.
It’s those little things that have made Oweh such a valuable addition to Pope’s first Kentucky team, in addition to those loud plays that make him so dangerous on both sides of the ball.
So far, he’s been as consistent as can be for the Cats, who have been able to count on him to do just about everything on the court, no matter the score or situation.
“It’s kind of just looking at different ways to impact the game,” Oweh said. “I feel like when you kind of rely on one thing — like, say that one thing isn’t working — then that’s when inconsistency comes. So just trying to be impactful in multiple ways. I feel like that’ll kind of shake away the inconsistency parts. Just being a two-way player. I feel you can get your energy from both sides of the ball, which is big for me.”
Next game
No. 9 Kentucky at Vanderbilt
When: 2:30 p.m. EST Saturday
TV: ESPN
Radio: WLAP-AM 630, WBUL-FM 98.1
Records: Kentucky 14-4 (3-2 SEC), Vanderbilt 15-4 (3-3)
Series: Kentucky leads 117-41
Last meeting: Kentucky won 93-77 on March 6, 2024, in Lexington
