How Kentucky cobbled together its biggest win so far. ‘A contribution from everybody’
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Game day: No. 12 Kentucky 78, No. 8 Tennessee 73
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Tuesday night’s men’s basketball game between Kentucky and Tennessee in Knoxville, Tennessee.
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Counted out by seemingly everyone outside the commonwealth before they even took the court Tuesday night, Mark Pope’s Kentucky Wildcats pulled off a stunner.
The Cats walked into Thompson-Boling Arena as the No. 12 team in the country. Yet they walked in underdogs. Big ones. By the time the ball was tipped, No. 8 Tennessee was a 10.5-point favorite.
By the time the buzzer sounded, Kentucky was a 78-73 winner.
The double-digit spread was understandable to anyone not wearing blue-tinted glasses.
It was revealed 24 hours before the game that the Cats would be playing without Lamont Butler, their starting point guard and the “heart and soul” of this Wildcats team — those were Pope’s words after the win — due to lingering injuries suffered through the grind of this season.
It was already known that Butler’s primary backup — sparkplug playmaker Kerr Kriisa — would remain sidelined against the Vols after suffering a foot injury nearly two months ago.
Starting power forward Andrew Carr, who has been dealing with a back injury and missed UK’s 74-69 loss at Vanderbilt three days earlier, was going to give it a go. That lasted less than 90 seconds before Pope pulled the clearly ailing Carr from the game early in the first half and never called his number again.
That left nine scholarship players at Pope’s disposal. A few of them hadn’t played much — and some none at all — against high-major competition until this recent rash of injuries.
All nine did something to help push the Cats across the finish line Tuesday night.
“Let me start with Amari,” Pope said afterward when asked about the collective effort his Cats put forth at the point guard position, with Butler and Kriisa watching from the sidelines.
Amari Williams is Kentucky’s 7-foot, 262-pound center — the biggest, tallest player on the team.
For much of the night — in the hostile environment filled with screaming, orange-clad fans, against the No. 1-rated defense in college basketball — Williams ran the point for the Wildcats.
“Amari Williams is like a one of one,” Pope said. “I’m asking him to do an impossible job right now. Come into this gym, sold out. … The No. 1 defense in the country. No point guard to be found on our roster. And I’m like, ‘Amari, it’s up to you. … You got to control the whole game.’
“And Amari brought the ball up against the press, probably more than anybody else on our team. Like, I’m telling you — this kid is special, man.”
Williams, who was celebrating his 23rd birthday Tuesday, scored 10 points to go with 15 rebounds and four assists. “There’s not a center in the country that’s had to carry a load the way he had to carry it tonight,” Pope added. “It was incredible.”
UK’s de facto starting point guard was Jaxson Robinson, who filled that role earlier this season, leading the Cats to a comeback victory over Gonzaga with Butler and Kriisa sidelined. Pope told the story after that one of how much Robinson hated playing the position for him at BYU and talked about how proud he was of him for stepping up against the Zags that night in Seattle.
Robinson still prefers to play off the ball — and he came into Tuesday night shooting 18-for-35 from 3-point range over his last four games — but he’s willingly stepped into whatever role Pope has wanted this season. He did it again against the Vols, turning the ball over with a bad pass on UK’s first possession before finding Koby Brea for a 3-pointer on the Cats’ second trip down the floor. Robinson then hit two 3-pointers of his own to help UK jump out to a 12-4 lead.
Down the stretch, he was clearly cramping up, getting whatever treatment he could on the bench before limping back onto the court. He subbed out three times in the second half, but the longest he stayed off the floor was 67 seconds.
“Jax is a freaking gamer, man,” Pope said. “He just is really special. He was great.”
Robinson finished with 17 points and four rebounds in 34 minutes. He was 4-for-9 from 3-point range.
“I mean, I had to do what I had to do — step up for my team,” Robinson said. “I knew that I couldn’t come out of the game. … I just had to fight through it.”
Ansley Almonor made his second consecutive start in place of Carr, and he hit the 3-pointer to put UK ahead 12-4 at the beginning. He hit two more 3s later in the first half. And then, with the score tied early in the second half, he nailed a fourth 3-pointer to put the Cats up 38-35.
That one was part of an 11-2 run to start the half. After Almonor’s shot, UK led the rest of the way.
“It’s Ansley Almonor that makes a team special,” Pope said. “You know, everybody kind of has the headline guy. And very few teams have the guy that’s really, really, really good, that’s gonna win you games. That is like, ‘I’m gonna do whatever the team needs.’ Especially a fifth-year senior that’s like, ‘I’ll do whatever the team needs, man.’”
Almonor, who has been Carr’s backup all season, scored 12 points and went 4-for-7 from deep in 30 minutes on the court, the most playing time he’s received as a Wildcat.
Brea came into the game in a bit of a funk. Since his lights-out, 7-for-9 shooting display from long range in a 106-100 win over Florida to begin league play back on Jan. 4, the fifth-year guard had gone 7-for-26 from deep over the five games that followed.
Against the Vols, he took only three 3-point shots. He made them all.
“And, my gosh, he made hard shots tonight,” Pope said. “I mean, he’s 3-for-3, and they were … they were unbelievable.”
Brea’s final 3 was a killer to give the Cats a 71-63 lead with a little more than five minutes left. The Vols went on a 5-0 run to cut UK’s lead to three, and then Brea drew a foul and drained both free throws. He finished with a team-high 18 points.
Freshman forward Trent Noah, who helped fill in admirably for Carr in the loss at Vandy, did it again against the Vols. He scored five points in nine minutes and made both of his shots.
“Trent’s not afraid of the moment,” Pope gushed afterward.
The moment he was talking about: Noah unleashing a 3-pointer while standing on the final “E” in the “Tennessee” painted on the Thompson-Boling court. The shot dropped to give the Cats a 55-44 lead. The UK bench erupted in the background. Pope pumped his fist on the sideline.
“Man, that was a huge one,” Robinson said. “Speaking for myself, it definitely got me going. Just knowing that Trent could step up and just knock it down with no hesitation. It was really huge.”
With Noah’s shot, the Cats had outscored Tennessee 25-11 to start the second half.
UK’s backup center Brandon Garrison also helped with the quarterbacking duties in the Cats’ halfcourt offense. He had a big dunk, an assist and no turnovers in 16 minutes, playing quality minutes as Williams’ backup.
“You gotta be his wingman,” Pope told Garrison before the game. Mission accomplished.
With the veteran playmakers out, freshman guards Collin Chandler and Travis Perry got some run in both halves. Chandler played 15 minutes. He had played just six total minutes in SEC games entering the night.
“I thought Colin Chandler’s minutes in the backcourt were massively important for us tonight,” Pope said.
Perry played five minutes off the bench.
“TP is getting better and better,” said Pope.
The only guy the Kentucky coach didn’t mention in his postgame comments was Otega Oweh, who has been one of the most consistent targets of Pope’s praise over the past few months. Oweh simply did what he’s done all season. He tallied 14 points, continuing his streak of scoring in double figures in what is now 20 games and counting as a Wildcat.
Oweh was part of the group effort at the point guard spot. His steal and dunk early in the second half gave the Cats a 34-33 lead. They never trailed again. He made more big plays as the half continued. And then, after the Vols cut UK’s lead to 74-73 with 30 seconds left, Oweh went 4-for-4 from the line to set the final score.
“It was a contribution from everybody,” Pope said of the collective performance. “Which we knew we’d have to have.”
What they ended up with was the biggest win of their season.
Kentucky is now 6-1 against AP top-15 teams under Pope, who guided the Cats to a win over now-No. 2 Duke in his third game as head coach. There was also that comeback win — down 16 points at halftime — in what was basically a road game against Gonzaga. There was the instant classic win over now-No. 5 Florida to start the SEC season. The victory over No. 14 Mississippi State in Starkville was almost as entertaining. That was impressive, too.
But nothing quite compares to what the Cats pulled off Tuesday night in Knoxville.
When some key guys went down, others stepped up. And Kentucky came out on top.
“We’ve been talking about it since the offseason, but we have a deep roster,” Robinson said. “And we think we can compete with anybody. And we come in waves. So, it’s just going out there and playing as hard as you can — knowing that your brothers got your back.”
This story was originally published January 28, 2025 at 11:53 PM.
