UK basketball started fast, but ran out of gas at Alabama. Mark Pope recaps the loss

Despite a fast start, Kentucky basketball couldn’t keep pace with Alabama on Saturday night in Tuscaloosa.

In a top-20 SEC matchup, it was the Crimson Tide that completed the season sweep over the Wildcats: Nate Oats’ club defeated Mark Pope’s team 96-83.

No. 4 Alabama got another special scoring night from fifth-year guard Mark Sears: The SEC preseason player of the year had 30 points for the Crimson Tide, including a perfect 11-for-11 showing from the foul line. Sears had 35 points on Wednesday night when Alabama lost at Missouri.

On the other side, the most consistent scoring presence for No. 17 Kentucky was anything but that in this game. Junior guard Otega Oweh — who entered the contest as UK’s leading scorer at 16.2 points per game — was limited to just two points on 1-for-9 shooting from the field. Oweh fouled out of the game with 6:49 still to play.

UK raced out to a hot start against Alabama, leading by 12 points midway through the first half.

But despite 20 points from fifth-year wing Koby Brea, a double-double from fifth-year center Amari Williams and 17 points from fifth-year forward Andrew Carr — who appears to be back to his normal self following a back injury — there wasn’t enough offensive production for UK to keep pace with an Alabama team that shot 52.5% from the field and averaged 1.247 points per possession.

Of course, it also didn’t help that Pope’s team was again down all three of its top options at point guard, with Lamont Butler, Kerr Kriisa and Jaxson Robinson all missing the game due to injury.

After the game, Pope met with reporters at Coleman Coliseum in Tuscaloosa, where his UK team dropped to 18-9 overall on the season and 7-7 in SEC games.

Here’s everything that Pope said.

Opening statement

Guys, really disappointing outcome. Congratulations to Alabama. They’re a terrific team. They’re playing really hard. They responded well to their last two setbacks. We just couldn’t quite slow them down enough, for long enough, to win the game.

I’ll take questions.

Question about Alabama going on a 24-4 run in the first half to take the lead.

Well, the game got a little helter-skelter. We got a little fatigued. We had some protection issues. We had some defensive coverage issues that were hard. Just, kind of the whole thing.

Question about Kentucky not taking advantage by scoring when it did get defensive stops.

They gave us a chance to start the second half, and minus us sending them to the free-throw line we were pretty good defensively. We weren’t functioning well on the offensive side either.

Question about the play of Andrew Carr and Koby Brea.

I’m super proud of our guys. You know, they’re competing, playing hard. Andrew and Koby specifically I thought competed at a really high level tonight. They were carrying a huge burden. That’s what they do. We just didn’t quite do it well enough.

Question about Alabama’s Mark Sears and his decision-making at the rim.

Yeah, they ended up “Barkley-ing” a ton tonight and we did a poor job responding. Schematically we did a poor job. On the court we did a poor job. Mark Sears was terrific tonight. He played a great game.

Question about Kentucky starting well from 3-point range, but cooling off as the game went on.

I think they played really hard and we made some shots early, we didn’t make some late. For us, the make or miss side is not why we win or lose.

Question about Kentucky is handling in-game situations with its new-look roster due to injuries.

I would like to handle them a lot better, but I do feel like we’re game three in, and we’re playing against a really good team on the road and clearly we have to get way better. And so, I’m proud of our young guys’ effort. They are getting better and we’ve got to keep getting better faster.

We have to really focus on... We’ve got to play some perfect basketball in terms of only making our mistakes, not making mistakes that aren’t us. We have to make mistakes the way we play, and there were too many tonight where it was mistakes that weren’t the way we play.

Question about how many possessions Pope would like Kentucky to have in a game.

I’d like to get to 100.

Question about what Alabama did to limit Otega Oweh, who fouled out, to only two points.

Are you baiting me into an answer here? I think Alabama is a terrific defensive team.

Question about the defensive progress that Pope had said he’d seen from Kentucky before the Alabama game.

Both. Alabama is a terrific team. And they put us in tough situations that we didn’t respond well to on the defensive end. It’s a work in progress. This is growth guys, we talk about this all the time. It’s fits and starts and this was not our best defensive performance tonight.

Mark Sears had a lot to do with that and Alabama had a lot to do with that, and we had a lot to do with that. We’re getting down into the stretch run and us getting better on this end of the ball is something that we’re obsessing about and we’re determined to do. If we do it well, then we’re going to have a good stretch.

This story was originally published February 22, 2025 at 9:37 PM.

Cameron Drummond

Lexington Herald-Leader

859-242-5257

Cameron Drummond works as a sports reporter for the Lexington Herald-Leader with a focus on Kentucky men’s basketball recruiting and the UK men’s basketball team, horse racing, soccer and other sports in Central Kentucky. Drummond is a second-generation American who was born and raised in Texas, before graduating from Indiana University. He is a fluent Spanish speaker who previously worked as a community news reporter in Austin, Texas. Support my work with a digital subscription