Kentucky basketball summons ‘March magic’ in the first tournament game of the Pope era
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Game day: Kentucky 85, Oklahoma 84
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Thursday night’s men’s basketball game between Kentucky and Oklahoma in the Southeastern Conference Tournament at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee.
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Not long after Kentucky’s 85-84 victory over Oklahoma in Bridgestone Arena — a game that started Thursday night and ended Friday morning — Mark Pope, Otega Oweh and Koby Brea exited the Wildcats’ locker room.
The UK basketball trio made their way through a small crowd and turned a corner to head to their postgame press conference.
“Hey boys,” Pope said, getting the attention of his two players walking a stride or two ahead. Brea and Oweh stopped. Pope leaned in and smiled.
“SEC Tournament is pretty fun, huh?” the coach said.
That’s one word for it.
You’d need a dictionary to describe what had just gone down out on the court.
A few minutes later, they all sat down at a table and started talking.
“I’m still in disbelief at what just happened,” Brea said, the expression on his face matching that comment.
In a game that tipped off at 10:46 p.m. EDT and didn’t wrap up until after 1 a.m. back home, the Wildcats experienced just about everything there was to experience in their first game of the SEC Tournament.
In front of a crowd that consisted almost entirely of UK fans — with multiple chants of “Go Big Blue!” before the ball was even tipped — Kentucky got off to a rousing start. The Cats made their first five shots of the game. They stopped the Sooners on each of their first three possessions.
The possibility of a rout early on settled down from there, setting up a surreal finish. Between that hot start and unreal ending, Kentucky’s season took a possibly disastrous turn.
Lamont Butler, the team’s starting point guard and leader on the court, left the game midway through the first half after reinjuring his left shoulder, a predicament that sounded serious enough in the aftermath of the game that it could put the rest of his season — and thus, the remainder of his college basketball career — in jeopardy.
With Butler watching from the UK bench, the Cats tried to block out the bad news and just keep on playing.
“I mean, we just had a next-man-up mentality,” Oweh said. “Obviously it sucks to see Lamont go down. He’s one of the toughest guys out there. But we just had to keep on fighting. There was so much game left. A lot of guys answered the call and just stepped up.”
A two-point halftime lead turned into a one-point deficit. Kentucky regained the advantage, but the Cats couldn’t quite pull away. Until they finally did. Or so it seemed.
UK was up 66-65 with about six and a half minutes left, when Oweh drained a 3-pointer to trigger what turned into an 11-0 run. That flurry lasted less than two minutes and ended with a slam dunk from Brandon Garrison that left the Kentucky fans in a frenzy, prompted Oklahoma coach Porter Moser to call a timeout, and it pretty much seemed like curtains for the Sooners.
After Oweh hit two free throws with 1:26 remaining, the Cats’ lead was at 10 points. That should have been it. But the game was far from finished.
The Sooners scored five points in six seconds to cut the lead to five. Then, with Kentucky up 83-77 and less than 45 seconds left, disaster struck.
Oklahoma freshman Jeremiah Fears hit a 3-pointer to cut the lead in half. A UK turnover led to a fast-break dunk by Jalon Moore, and the Cats’ advantage was down to one measly point. Kentucky committed another turnover — this one was on Oweh — and Oklahoma reset its offense, which ended with Fears driving to the basket to give the Sooners an 84-83 lead with 5.6 seconds left. Kentucky called a timeout. Everyone in the building was stunned.
And then the surreal turned into the spectacular.
“What makes that moment so spectacular is he was somehow able — our team was somehow able — to move past the devastation of just kicking to the curb an emotional, hard-fought win and losing Lamont and all the things that came with that,” Pope said.
“These guys — these really special guys, that love Kentucky so much and want so badly to perform for this team — they were like, ‘OK, this thing went totally bad on us. We totally messed this up.’ All of us, myself included. And then they still stayed present enough to make a game-winning play in the last five seconds. That’s why that play is so special, right?”
That play?
It started with freshman Trent Noah taking the ball out of bounds on the baseline. Noah passed it in to Oweh, who sprinted down the court. Oklahoma’s Kobe Elvis and Brycen Goodine appeared to be in a position to trap Oweh as he crossed halfcourt, but the Wildcat was too quick for them. Oweh dribbled around the two Sooners, straight toward the baseline and curled toward the basket before reaching the corner.
As Elvis and Goodine collapsed, Moore came over to help — putting three Oklahoma players within arms reach of the Wildcats’ top scorer. Oweh attacked the crowd, contorted his body and shifted the ball to his left hand. He let off a shot that Moore nearly got a piece of.
“I just wanted to try to get it up or get fouled,” Oweh said.
He didn’t get fouled. But the shot went in with 0.5 seconds left on the clock.
“It kind of felt good,” Oweh said.
Pope held back laughter.
“Did it kind of feel good?” he asked.
“It felt great,” Oweh whispered with a grin.
“All of us would like to know exactly what that felt like,” Pope said.
In the end — after a long, emotional night that had turned into morning — it felt like victory.
For the second time in 15 days, Oweh — an Oklahoma Sooner for his first two seasons of college basketball — punished his old team on the court. He scored a career-high 28 points in an 83-82 victory over the Sooners in Norman on Feb. 26, tallying the final 18 points for the Wildcats in an epic finish. On Thursday night, he scored 27 points, including the game-winner.
“It was super unbelievable to see it again,” Brea said. “We were just talking in the locker room. The first time, it felt like we were in a movie going through it. This time, it felt like a movie again. So he has a part two to this now. He created a sequel. So we’ll have to see what’s next.”
Pope called it “March magic,” and he obviously hopes there’s much more in store for his team.
For Brea and Oweh and the rest of these Cats, it was their first taste of the SEC Tournament, their first look at the way Kentucky fans can take over a supposedly neutral site in the postseason. And it’s a sight they won’t soon forget.
“I mean, Big Blue Nation never fails to surprise me,” Oweh said. “Obviously, I heard about it. But just living in the moment, it’s crazy. It was packed out — so much blue, so much energy. We feed off of that, so this is something that we’re all going to remember. And we just got to cherish these moments and be where our feet are.
“It’s just definitely a blessing to be here and be playing for the state of Kentucky.”
This story was originally published March 14, 2025 at 4:06 AM.
