The biggest Kentucky Wildcat of them all is beginning to throw his weight around
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Game day: No. 17 Kentucky 82, Vanderbilt 61
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Wednesday night’s men’s basketball game between Kentucky and Vanderbilt in Rupp Arena.
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With Kentucky basketball still patching together its backcourt in the wake of injuries, the Wildcats turned to their big men Wednesday night against Vanderbilt.
And the biggest of those bigs — Amari Williams — posed a problem all night long in UK’s 82-61 victory in Rupp Arena.
What, exactly, made Williams so hard to handle for the Commodores?
“Well, he’s huge,” deadpanned Vandy coach Mark Byington after his team’s loss.
Byington was speaking literally. On this night, the description worked figuratively, too.
Williams ended the win with 17 points, six rebounds and four blocked shots. The 7-foot, 262-pound super-senior from Nottingham, England, also turned in a perfect shooting performance. He was 6-for-6 from the field and 5-for-5 on free throws.
But simple stats don’t really tell the story of Williams’ night. They haven’t in a while.
Kentucky coach Mark Pope has been singing the praises of his “point center” since before this season began, and that praise has only grown louder in recent weeks. Amid the injuries to Lamont Butler, Kerr Kriisa and Jaxson Robinson — the team’s top three options at point guard, all out again Wednesday night — Williams has been a constant on the ball.
The sight of the 7-footer bringing it up the court for the Wildcats has been a common one. His quarterbacking responsibilities in the halfcourt offense — prevalent from the start in Pope’s five-out offense — have only grown as the Cats’ list of available point guards has shrunk.
Yes, he can pass. He’s shown it from the beginning. He had just one assist Wednesday, though.
Another part of his game has been emerging, even as he’s being relied upon more and more to help keep Kentucky’s offense moving.
Williams is 7 feet tall and 262 pounds, it bears repeating, and he’s been acting like it.
And when he’s acting like it, there’s not a whole lot opponents can do to stop him.
“You know, if he was 6-6, I wouldn’t worry about it,” Byington continued. “But his arms are incredibly long. He’s tall. We know he’s going to his left hand. Everybody in the country knows he’s going to his left hand. He’s still tough to stop.
“We were a little undersized, and we didn’t want to double, because he’s a great passer.”
When Williams draws a double team, Byington pointed out, he’s smart enough and quick enough and accurate enough with the ball to find the open man, and that open man is often standing on the 3-point line.
The Vandy coach said he thought his team did a good job of keeping Williams from gaining a deep position in the post — where he can really start cooking — in the last matchup against Kentucky, one the Commodores won 74-69 in Nashville.
But that was nearly a month ago, and Williams is a different player now than he was then.
That’s odd to say about a fifth-year college athlete with 105 games under his belt before he even arrived in Lexington last offseason. But it’s true.
Somewhere along the way as a Wildcat, he’s learned to throw that weight around.
Pope has talked about it at length in recent weeks. His explanation: Williams played his first four seasons at Drexel, which competes in the Coastal Athletic Association, where the guys he was battling in the post didn’t exactly stick around for those battles.
When Williams would try to back down one of his smaller CAA foes in the paint, they simply fell to the floor. More often than not, a charge was called. SEC bigs, he said, take more “pride” in trying to hold their ground.
After four years of fine-tuning his game to that CAA style, it’s understandable that it took Williams a little while to get fully adjusted to the type of basketball that’s played at this level.
He sure seems to be adjusted now.
“He’s getting more and more confident around the rim,” Pope said. “He was not unstoppable at the rim early in the season, because he would get rushed. Right? Now, he’s just like, ‘Yep, I’m just going to go to work down here, and I’m going to get to two feet and just kind of go work.’ I thought he was brilliant tonight.”
Pope specifically pointed to one jump hook in the second half that caught his eye. Williams even went to his right hand on a couple of scoring opportunities. And showing off some of that finesse and creativity around the rim is part of the continued growth, but it’s the sheer strength that Williams has shown in the paint that has garnered the most attention.
Kentucky led Vanderbilt 41-40 at halftime. The Cats came roaring out of the break, and Williams had a couple of strong buckets at the rim — and a couple of blocks on the other end — before hitting that turnaround jumper that Pope was proud to see.
By the time he subbed out of the game for the first time in the second half, the Cats’ lead had ballooned to 53-44 and they were well on their way to victory. The Rupp Arena crowd — quick to pop on big 3-pointers and emphatic dunks — has always been a sucker for hard-nosed play, too, and the Kentucky fans gave Williams a rousing ovation as he left the court at that moment.
His energy is contagious, too.
Andrew Carr said his UK teammates feed off of it. He and Williams have become good friends during their only college season together, and Williams is about as mild-mannered as they come off the court. Sometimes, between the lines, he can have an edge about him.
“He’s a beast,” Carr said. “I think my favorite part is he gets salty pretty quickly. And we really love that. When Amari’s salty, we’re in a good spot. I just love that about him, and that certainly fuels the physicality that he plays with, as well.”
That saltiness came out at times Wednesday night. It was also present in Kentucky’s game at Texas over the weekend. Williams was a load around the rim in that one, too. During one energetic stretch, he even goaded the Longhorns’ student section before heading to the UK bench during a timeout.
But his spirited play in Austin was overshadowed by the fact that Kentucky lost the game, the lead getting away from the Cats at the end. On Wednesday night — after a much-needed victory over Vanderbilt — he was celebrated.
With just two more games in Rupp Arena beyond this one — and just five to go in the regular season — Williams’ short run in a UK uniform has flown by.
There’s not much time left in his college career, but he thinks he still has more to show.
“I mean, for sure,” he agreed. “I’m still adapting to the league, I would say. I wish I had another year to be able to adapt to this league, since it’s so great. But I feel like that’s what it is — just kind of being more confident and just learning new ways I can attack the basket.”
Williams didn’t go it alone Wednesday night.
Otega Oweh led the Cats with 20 points, continuing his streak of scoring in double figures in every game this season. Koby Brea, in a bit of a shooting slump, hit a 3-pointer on the game’s first possession and finished with 12 points.
Carr, who returned to the starting lineup for the first time in four weeks, added 11 points, helping to key that early second-half run. Physically, he looked the best he’s been since suffering a back injury around the beginning of SEC play, and he confirmed Wednesday night that he’s been feeling a lot better. Carr didn’t get to play in UK’s loss at Vandy last month as a result of that injury.
“It looks like Carr’s healthy again,” Byington said. “And when he’s healthy, he’s a matchup problem.”
Freshman guard Collin Chandler was the first Wildcat off the bench, hit a 3-pointer before the first TV timeout of the game and ended up with seven points and six rebounds, both career highs.
The result of it all was a 21-point victory over an opponent projected to make the NCAA Tournament — not bad for a team missing three of its most important players.
Pope has made no promises when (or if) those players will return, and he’s made it clear that his Cats will need to find ways to win with Butler, Kriisa and Robinson on the sidelines. Getting a good one so emphatically Wednesday night — four days removed from the disappointment in Texas — gave everyone a reason to smile at the end.
“We’re a work in progress,” Pope said with a laugh. “It’s a brand-new season, right? And I think we’ll get a lot of confidence. And what was fun was we had such huge contributions from everybody. This is a team that beat us down there. This is a really good team. This is a team we respect a lot. This is a team that poses some real problems for us. …
“And I think it should give our guys a lot of confidence. And I’m happy for our guys that they get this little injection of energy. Of positive energy. Like, ‘OK, we got a brand-new team. Game 1, we played well, but we didn’t finish the way we wanted to. Game 2, we played really well.’ … And it’s gonna be fun to grow this group.”
Next game
No. 17 Kentucky at No. 4 Alabama
When: 6 p.m. EST Saturday
TV: ESPN
Radio: WLAP-AM 630, WBUL-FM 98.1
Records: Kentucky 18-8 (7-6 SEC), Alabama 21-5 (10-3)
Series: Kentucky leads 117-42
Last meeting: Alabama won 102-97 on Jan. 18, 2025, in Lexington
This story was originally published February 19, 2025 at 11:48 PM.
