Kentucky looked like it might steal an SEC win on the road. Here’s how it all fell apart
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Game day: Texas 82, No. 15 Kentucky 78
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Saturday night’s men’s basketball game between Kentucky and Texas in Austin, Texas.
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Kentucky was four minutes away from stealing one Saturday night.
Not that Mark Pope’s Wildcats wouldn’t have deserved a victory over Texas in the Moody Center after what went down over the first 90% of the night. They would have.
“Man, we competed really hard,” Pope said after UK’s 82-78 loss to the Longhorns.
Kentucky’s players fought all night long. At times, they executed well, too. But there were moments along the way that indicated the basketball gods might have something in store for a Wildcats team in need of a little good luck.
For much of the game, UK was winning despite the adverse circumstances they faced coming into it. About 24 hours before tipoff, what had been assumed was confirmed: Lamont Butler, Kerr Kriisa and Jaxson Robinson would all miss the game against the Longhorns due to injury.
By the time tipoff came, the Cats were listed as 4.5-point underdogs against a Texas team that had lost four of its last five games and came into this one with a 4-8 record in the SEC.
The Horns were projected as an NCAA Tournament team, but they were clinging to that spot.
Kentucky (now 17-8 overall and 6-6 in league play) was named by the actual NCAA Tournament Selection Committee as a 3 seed — ranked No. 10 overall — in its early bracket that was revealed Saturday afternoon.
But those absences on UK’s end — both veteran point guards out, plus the Cats’ second-leading scorer and de facto point guard in their absence — made Pope’s team the underdog. That meant some good fortune would probably be necessary. And they got some.
Travis Perry, the reigning Kentucky Mr. Basketball and state’s all-time leading scorer, made his first start as a Wildcat, stepping in as the fourth-string point guard. He hit a stepback 3-pointer to give UK a 9-2 lead before the first TV timeout, prompting Texas coach Rodney Terry to call one of his own and stop the onslaught.
A sustained “Go Big Blue!” chant broke out in the Moody Center, turning the farthest-flung SEC site from Lexington — about 15 hours, if you drive it — into a friendly atmosphere right off the bat. That was a good start.
Fairly late in the half, the Cats trailing 28-23, the shot clock was ticking down, and Amari Williams let loose a 3-pointer. It actually went in, to the surprise of everyone in the arena. A minute later, he took another one. (Williams had attempted one 3-pointer, and missed it, in 517 minutes on the court this season coming into the game.)
The second one didn’t fall through the net, but the miss fell right to Ansley Almonor, who scored on the putback to tie the game at 30. Kentucky getting 2.5 points per possession when Williams takes a 3-pointer? That’s some pretty good fortune.
Less than a minute later, Trent Noah nailed a 3-pointer. That scenario — UK’s 12th man to start the season canning one from deep in the first half of an SEC road game — didn’t look as crazy Saturday night as it might have sounded a few weeks ago. Noah hit three of them in a win over No. 5 Tennessee earlier in the week, after all.
But about 50 seconds later, the freshman from Harlan County played the pick and roll to perfection in finding Brandon Garrison with a pinpoint pass for an alley-oop dunk. It was Noah’s fourth assist this season. It gave Kentucky a 35-32 lead.
“I think the guys came to battle,” Pope said of the team as a whole. “I think we knew what we were up against, and 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.”
Almonor hit a 3-pointer early in the second half to give UK a 48-41 lead. The Wildcats missed their next seven shots from there and were down by three at the end of it. This looked like it might be where the mix of grit and good fortune ran out, but it wasn’t.
Kentucky eventually retook the lead, and then three consecutive baskets — courtesy of Otega Oweh, Williams and Andrew Carr — put the Cats up 65-60 with 5:43 to play. The two teams traded points from there, and then it all fell apart.
“We just didn’t execute well,” Pope said. “It was kind of a little mess of problems.”
Still up five with less than four minutes left, UK gave up an offensive rebound and then an and-one putback to Tre Johnson, the Longhorns’ star freshman and SEC’s leading scorer. Oweh went 1-for-2 from the line on the other end, and Tramon Mark hit a midrange jumper.
“Which is a shot that we would traditionally be like, ‘OK, we’re going to live with that,’” Pope said.
And then, with Kentucky clinging to a one-point lead, Perry committed a turnover with a poor pass. “Just a killer,” Pope said.
Mark hit two free throws on the other end to give Texas a 71-70 lead. Kentucky never pulled even again, but the misfortunes weren’t finished. Johnson hit a free throw to make it 72-70 and then missed the second — at 9-for-10 from the line, his only miss of the night — to give Kentucky an opening.
Instead of that being a good turn for the Cats, it was the Longhorns who came up with the rebound, with Kadin Shedrick putting it right back in for a 74-70 lead.
“That was another dagger,” Pope said. “And it kind of went from there.”
It sure did. A series of misses and poor passes followed, and by the time UK finally scored again — a 3-pointer by Perry with 18 seconds left — the outcome had been determined.
Over a span of just three minutes — starting with Johnson’s and-one putback with 3:36 to go — the Longhorns went on a 14-1 run to put the Cats away. Johnson finished with a career-high 32 points. Mark scored 26. They combined for 12 points in that 14-1 run to win it.
“One of the things that has been really special about our team is we’ve done a great job of kind of being in the moment, being on to the next play,” Pope said. “It’s been a really good character of our team. And we just weren’t our normal selves in that aspect of the game in the last three minutes and 45 seconds.
“And, for me, I’ve got to find a way to help our guys be the way that we’ve been, which we’ve been pretty good about being really, really present in those moments. And I didn’t help our guys do that well enough tonight. And 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.”
The UK coach let out a long sigh after that response. He didn’t give many specifics on the lack of “presentness” — as he called it — down the stretch, what led to it or how the Cats might avoid it in the future. But it was an ugly finish to an otherwise gutsy performance.
One logical explanation is those injuries and the way the absence of some key Wildcats has reverberated across the rest of the roster. Some guys are playing out of position. Some are playing more minutes than they would be otherwise. Many are doing both.
Perhaps 36 minutes and change of all that led to some fatigue — physical and mental — at the end?
“We’re not leaving any space for that,” Pope said, shooting that one down. “I have a good team. The guys on the court are good players, and we’re good enough to win. And these guys have proven that. We just didn’t do it in the last three minutes and 45 seconds tonight. That’s just it.
“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. And 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. And we’ll lean into the facts right now.”
Additional talk of injuries and the role they might have played in this loss was shot down just as hard by Pope, who praised Perry (a career-high 28 minutes) and Noah (a career-high 21 minutes) for their performances under unfortunate circumstances.
That show of confidence was also coming from a coach who doesn’t know when — or maybe even if — Butler or Kriisa or Robinson will return to the Kentucky lineup. As it stands, the Cats need to find ways to win with the players they have. And they only have six more games in the regular season to do so.
“We’re good enough to win,” Pope said. “So we’re not allowing any space for any (excuses). … 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 in the season where these late-game situations, they’re going to become increasingly heated. We have incredibly painful moments from this game, where we weren’t present. And we will learn from that. … And, 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. And these guys are so emotionally invested. They’re putting 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. And we’re not spending any time thinking about anything else.”
This story was originally published February 16, 2025 at 12:51 AM.
