Amid chants of ‘traitor’ and boos galore, Otega Oweh willed Kentucky past Oklahoma
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Game day: No. 17 Kentucky 83, Oklahoma 82
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Wednesday night’s men’s basketball game between Kentucky and Oklahoma in Norman, Okla.
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A day before returning to the Lloyd Noble Center — his basketball home for the past two seasons — Otega Oweh acknowledged that he didn’t quite know what to expect.
Oweh spent his first two years in college as a member of the Oklahoma Sooners. He was coming back as a Kentucky Wildcat. How would the fans — the same fans that cheered him on for the previous two seasons — react to seeing him again in UK blue instead of OU crimson?
“I really don’t know,” Oweh said Tuesday afternoon.
Could he make a guess?
“I really can’t,” the junior guard said with a grin, a comedic lilt to his reply that drew laughter from those gathered around him.
“We’re gonna see,” he continued. “But either way, I’m excited to just get on the court again.”
Flash forward to Wednesday night, and there was Oweh standing at the free-throw line. The game was tied at 75. Fewer than three minutes remained on the clock. And the Oklahoma fans who’d been booing Oweh all night long let him know exactly how they felt.
“He’s a traitor! He’s a traitor!” they chanted.
Oweh made the first free throw.
“He’s a traitor! He’s a traitor!” the chant continued.
And then Oweh made the second.
Those weren’t the deciding points in Kentucky’ 83-82 thriller of a win over the Sooners, and Oweh would have to make plenty more big plays down the stretch before the Cats could claim the SEC road victory, but the UK player’s resolve in that moment summed up his night.
In this game, in this atmosphere, there was simply no way Oweh was going home with a loss.
“I didn’t know what to expect, really,” he said after it was all over. “But once you’re on the court, it don’t really matter. It’s just hoopin’ and trying to get the win.”
The Wildcats wouldn’t have gotten the win without Oweh on Wednesday night. They likely wouldn’t have even come close.
Kentucky’s leading scorer was coming off of his worst game of the season. He had scored in double figures in his first 26 appearances as a Wildcat — the only player in the SEC with such a run — before that streak came crashing down Saturday, when Oweh managed only two points and shot 1-for-9 from the floor in a 96-83 loss to Alabama.
That one obviously left a sour taste in his mouth. He wanted to get back onto the court as quickly as possible, no matter the opponent. That opponent just happened to be his old team.
Oklahoma fans booed Oweh every time he touched the ball throughout the night, those jeers gaining volume as the contest got closer to its end. And that’s when the former Sooner went off.
Amari Williams threw down a dunk with 12:51 left to give Kentucky a 60-57 lead.
After that, no Wildcat other than Oweh made a shot from the field.
Lamont Butler hit two free throws with 9:20 remaining to narrow Oklahoma’s lead to 68-65.
After that, no Wildcat other than Oweh scored a point.
“I thought Otega made some just absolute huge plays down the stretch,” said Oklahoma coach Porter Moser, who recruited the Newark, New Jersey, native out of high school and helped develop his game over the past two seasons, before Oweh left Norman in search of something else and ended up with Mark Pope at Kentucky, where he’s spent the past several months transforming into a bonafide star.
Amid a season of bright moments, none was brighter than what happened here.
Not only did Oweh put the Cats on his back and power them to a victory, he did it in spectacular fashion.
The Sooners made nine straight shots from the field at one point in the second half, but their lead was only 71-69 at the end of that flurry. Not long after it ended, Oweh threw down a dunk on a fast break, and the game was tied with nearly seven minutes left on the clock.
From there, Oweh unleashed a collection of spin moves, circus shots and power drives — often combining two or three of those elements into a single play — to keep the Cats in it all by himself.
Butler, who returned from a shoulder injury after missing the past three games, fouled out with more than four minutes left. Jaxson Robinson, who returned from a wrist injury after missing the past four games, didn’t play at all in the second half, Pope explaining afterward that his shooting wrist “didn’t respond great” — adding more injury concerns to UK’s future.
Williams and Andrew Carr — the other two starters — were in foul trouble throughout the game.
Offensively, it turned out that the Wildcats didn’t need any of them in the final minutes.
“I just tried to impose my will,” Oweh said.
He succeeded.
Oweh hit a runner to give Kentucky a 79-77 lead, but Oklahoma quickly answered with a 3-pointer to take back the advantage. Oweh then missed a 3 of his own. No matter. The Cats got a stop on the other end, and Williams found Oweh all alone under the basket. He hit a layup, and Kentucky was back ahead, 81-80.
“Otega — hats off to him,” Moser said. “He had a phenomenal game, made some really tough shots, and (we) couldn’t get a stop down the stretch.”
It wasn’t over.
Jalon Moore, the Sooners’ leading scorer and Oweh’s old teammate, made two free throws with 20 seconds left to put Oklahoma back on top. Oweh said he spoke with Moore just last week. He referred to him and his other former teammates as “brothers” and said those relationships haven’t gone away just because he now plays for the Wildcats.
But in between the lines, all that goes out the window.
On Kentucky’s ensuing possession — its last of the game, with no timeouts, and UK’s top three point guard options once again on the bench — Travis Perry brought the ball up the floor. The freshman dribbled around for a bit and then handed the ball off to Oweh with about 12 seconds left. Oweh fumbled the exchange — for just a moment — before regaining possession.
He drove at the basket with his left hand, then stepped back into the lane toward his right, shaking his defender and unleashing a running, sideways shot at the basket as he fell to the floor.
It went through the net. Kentucky 83, Oklahoma 82.
Jeremiah Fears, the Sooners’ star freshman, drove down the court and got a good look at a possible game-winner, but Oweh got a piece of it from behind, Brandon Garrison got a larger chunk of it, and Koby Brea collected the rebound as the clock expired.
Once the buzzer sounded — and all the replay reviews were sorted out — Oweh had scored a career-high 28 points. And he had scored Kentucky’s final 18 points of the game.
“That’s crazy,” Oweh said, with genuine surprise in his voice, when that last stat was read to him afterward. It was the first he’d heard of it.
Oweh got the better of his old team. Garrison, who grew up about 20 miles from Oklahoma’s campus, had one of his best games as a Wildcat in front of dozens of friends and family members. Robinson, another Oklahoma native, had a frustrating night, but his team got the win.
Kentucky improved to 19-9 on the season and 8-7 in the rough-and-tumble SEC with the victory. The Cats, already projected as a 3 seed in most NCAA Tournament brackets, earned yet another win over a good team on the road.
Part of the reason Oweh decided to leave Oklahoma and come to UK, he’s made clear from the beginning of his time with the Wildcats, was to put himself in a better position to play in March Madness, something he didn’t get to do during his first two seasons of college basketball.
He’s now just three weeks away from that becoming a reality.
And — while there are still three games left in the regular season, with No. 1 Auburn coming to Rupp Arena on Saturday — it’s getting close enough to the end that minds, even if only for a little while, are drifting into the future.
“We talked about this at shootaround. We talked about it before the game,” Pope said. “This had all of the makings of a first round NCAA Tournament game. All of the makings. All the weirdness that was associated with these guys coming home. It was a late start. We had this roster turnover. It was a different environment in this gym, and all those things.
“So the guys were terrific at anticipating frustration. I thought the game got really interesting. I think we got down six or seven, and it was kind of this turning point in our guys, and they just rallied. And we’re trying to capture that and roll into postseason play with a huge focus on this specific game. It meant something to us. And it’s nice that we had guys make incredible plays on both sides of the ball to finish it. So we get to experience this and chase it again.”
Next game
No. 1 Auburn at No. 17 Kentucky
When: 1 p.m. Saturday
TV: ABC
Radio: WLAP-AM 630, WBUL-FM 98.1
Records: Auburn 26-2 (14-1 SEC), Kentucky 19-9 (8-7)
Series: Kentucky leads 98-23
Last meeting: Kentucky won 70-59 on Feb. 17, 2024, at Auburn, Alabama
This story was originally published February 27, 2025 at 1:44 AM.
