Mark Pope explains how Kentucky basketball lost a late lead — and the game — at Texas
Kentucky basketball faltered down the stretch in a big way Saturday night.
For most of what finished as an 82-78 loss at Texas, the Wildcats played admirably while without their top three options at point guard. Fifth-year guards Lamont Butler, Kerr Kriisa and Jaxson Robinson all missed the defeat to the Longhorns due to injury.
Despite this, UK positioned itself well to secure an all-important SEC road win: The Cats led by three, 70-67, with 2:50 to play.
Then, things went awry for head coach Mark Pope’s team.
Texas outscored Kentucky 15-8 the rest of the way.
The Wildcats wasted the eighth double-double of the season by fifth-year forward Amari Williams, who had 18 points, 12 rebounds and three assists. Junior guard Otega Oweh led the Cats with 20 points. Oweh has now scored at least 10 points in all 25 games this season.
The Wildcats shot a frigid 25% (6-for-24) on 3-pointers, including an 0-for-4 showing from fifth-year guard Koby Brea. This snapped a streak of 39 straight games for Brea in which he made a 3-pointer.
On the other side, Texas’ offense came courtesy of two obvious sources. Freshman star guard Tre Johnson entered Saturday’s contest as the SEC’s leading scorer (19.3 points per game) and had a career-best 32 points against the Cats. The Longhorns also got 26 points from fifth-year guard Tramon Mark, who scored 23 points against UK last season while playing for Arkansas.
Kentucky is now 17-8 overall, but just 6-6 in SEC games. The potential of securing a double bye in the SEC Tournament is now much harder for UK, which returns to action Wednesday at home against Vanderbilt.
Earlier Saturday, the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee revealed that, as of now, Kentucky was a 3 seed and the No. 10 overall seed for March Madness.
After the game, Pope met with media members in Austin, Texas, to recap a game that got away from his club.
Here’s everything he said.
Opening statement
Great environment. Texas played really tough and physical. Congratulations to Rodney (Terry). They certainly earned the win.
I thought our guys fought really hard. I thought we really fought, I thought we really competed and I thought we did not execute the way you need to down the stretch to win a game.
Question about the environment at the Moody Center and the play of Tramon Mark.
The Moody Center is great. Terrific building. What a fun venue.
Mark really killed us down the stretch. I thought he made big play after big play. He had a tremendous game. He was really special tonight.
Question about how Texas’ offense looks different this season with Tre Johnson.
Yes, in the sense of having the leading scorer in the conference, for sure it does. But some of the (offensive) DNA is still there (from last season).
Question about Kentucky’s execution down the stretch.
Our guys, man we competed really hard. We just didn’t execute well. It was kind of a little mess of problems.
We’re up five and we give up an offensive rebound, putback, and-one. Then we come down the floor and we make one out of two free throws. Then we give up a mid-range jumper, which is a shot that we would traditionally be like ‘OK, we’re going to live with that challenged mid-range jumper,’ and then we come back down and we turn the ball over on an entry that was just a killer, that just really killed us at 71-70.
Then, we gave up an offensive rebound, inexplicably, on a free throw, that was another dagger. It kind of went from there.
We just couldn’t quite... One of the things that’s been really special about our team is we’ve done a great job of kind of being in the moment, being onto the next play. It’s been a really good characteristic of our team.
We just weren’t our normal selves in that aspect of the game in the last three minutes and 45 seconds. For me, I’ve got to find a way to help our guys be the way that we’ve been, which has been pretty good being really, really present in those moments.
I didn’t help our guys do that well enough tonight. Sometimes things don’t go your way, certainly late in games, especially on the road. But, we didn’t give ourselves a chance that we deserved to give ourselves with the effort that the guys put into the game.
Question about Tramon Mark and if Kentucky had an emotional letdown after beating Tennessee on Tuesday.
No, I don’t think we had an emotional letdown at all. I think the guys came to battle. I think we knew what we were up against. I think our guys were really fixed on the challenge.
I felt like our emotional energy was great the whole night. I thought our guys were here to compete and fight. I thought we had guys step up and make important plays.
I’m really actually proud of our guys’ effort, for sure. Our execution stunk, in the last four minutes, absolutely, on both sides of the ball. And really it wasn’t even our execution, it was partly our execution, but our present-ness was poor.
In terms of Mark, it’s certainly the best game he’s had this season. I thought he was terrific. It was a really important game for Texas and when you have really important games, you know, guys step up and make huge plays and he was a superstar tonight.
Question about Texas’ resiliency after losing three straight games before beating UK.
I thought they had great fight. I thought they had great physicality. Rodney does an unbelievable job. Like, he’s been incredible here, in his tenure here.
He’s doing a great job with these guys. I think he’s an elite-level coach and I think he’s doing a great job.
Question about if Kentucky’s injury situation contributed to the lack of present-ness.
We’re not leaving any space for that. Like, I have a good team. Like the guys on the court are good players. And we’re good enough to win. These guys have proven that.
We just didn’t do it in the last three minutes and 45 seconds tonight. That’s just it. It was tonight, and it’s super painful, it’s not acceptable, all those things are true.
But we have the guys we need to win and we’re going to figure out a way to do it. We did it for 36 minutes, we just couldn’t do it for the last four. That’s just the truth. That’s just the fact. We’ll lean into the facts right now.
Question about Kentucky’s changing lineups due to injuries.
We’re just not spending any time on that. We have really good players. Travis Perry stepped up and really battled like crazy tonight. And Trent Noah is doing unbelievable work.
These guys that are filling in spots, they’re really, really good players. We’re good enough to win. So we’re not allowing any space for any of that.
Like, we have a good team. We’re good enough to win. We were good enough to win for 36 minutes tonight. And we’ll get good enough to win in the last four.
Certainly there’s some new stuff, for sure, certainly some guys are in positions they haven’t been in, for sure, but this group is good enough to win, and we’ll figure that part out.
We’re going to get there. We’re at that point of the season where these late-game situations, they’re going to become increasingly heated. We have incredibly painful moments from this game when we weren’t present, and we will learn from that and we’re going to continue to get better.
Listen, if we do this right, these moments are the moments that we’re going to get to replay again, and we’re going to do them right. These guys are so emotionally invested, they put in so much energy, they’re so committed to each other, that they’ll figure this out.
But it’s about the guys that are on the court right now. And we have the guys to do this. We’re not spending any time thinking about anything else.
This story was originally published February 16, 2025 at 12:09 AM.
