Kentucky basketball moves on in NCAA Tournament with rout of Troy in March Madness opener
READ MORE
Game day: Kentucky 76, Troy 57
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader’s and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Friday night’s men’s basketball game between Kentucky and Troy at the NCAA Tournament in Milwaukee.
Expand All
The first one is out of the way for the Kentucky Wildcats.
Coach Mark Pope’s team moved past a slow start to its NCAA Tournament opener and ultimately ran away with a 76-57 victory over Troy in the Fiserv Forum on Friday night.
Now, the Cats are one win away from moving beyond the first weekend of March Madness for the first time in six years.
UK unleashed a 16-0 run in the second half — with the first 15 of the points in that flurry coming from bench players Collin Chandler and Brandon Garrison — to open up a 61-39 lead and basically put the game out of reach for the 14-seeded Trojans, who had kept things relatively close up until that point.
Troy went nearly six minutes without scoring as Kentucky went on its 16-0 run.
The Trojans answered with nine consecutive points to cut UK’s lead to 61-48 — prompting Pope to call a timeout with 5:39 remaining — but Koby Brea rattled home a 3-pointer to end that run, and Otega Oweh threw down a dunk in transition to give the Cats a 66-48 lead. Oweh scored again at the basket right after that, and Kentucky’s lead was back up to 20 points.
Oweh led the Wildcats with 20 points. UK’s leading scorer for the season also had eight rebounds and a team-high six assists. Andrew Carr tallied 13 points and three blocks. Brea also had 13 points.
Garrison joined them in double figures with 13 points, and Amari Williams had a team-high 13 rebounds, plus four assists. Chandler scored all nine of his points in a span of less than two minutes to help get the 16-0 run started.
The Cats were 11.5-point favorites by tipoff, but Kentucky fans know by now not to take anything in the NCAA Tournament for granted.
UK had lost in the first round as major favorites in two of the past three seasons, with a defeat to 15-seeded Saint Peter’s in 2022 and last year’s shocking loss to 14-seeded Oakland in the March Madness opener.
Next up for the Wildcats will be either 6-seeded Illinois or 11-seeded Xavier — the two teams in the Friday late game in Milwaukee — with a trip to the Sweet 16 on the line. That matchup will happen Sunday, and Kentucky has not advanced past the second round of the tournament since 2019.
It appeared that Illinois fans outnumbered Kentucky fans in the Fiserv Forum on Friday night.
This was also the first NCAA Tournament victory as a head coach for Pope, who was a captain on UK’s 1996 national championship team and was hired as John Calipari’s replacement last April.
Pope is in his 10th season as a head coach, spending the first four at Utah Valley and the previous five at BYU, which went to the NCAA Tournament twice in his tenure. Both of those times, the Cougars were a 6 seed and suffered upset losses to an 11 seed in the first round, including a defeat at the hands of Duquesne last season.
Pope’s Cougars were also projected to be a 6 seed in the 2020 NCAA Tournament, but that event was canceled due to the COVID-10 pandemic.
In Pope’s first March Madness game as Kentucky’s coach, the Wildcats (23-11) let Troy hang around for most of the first half.
Kentucky was clinging to a 25-24 lead with a little more than three minutes to go until halftime — with no offensive rhythm to that point in the game — before Trent Noah hit a 3-pointer to kickstart a 10-0 run for the Cats.
Carr nailed a 3-pointer on UK’s next possession. Then Williams — a 7-footer who often brings the ball up the court for the Cats — saw an opening and took it the length of the floor for a thunderous slam, drawing a foul and forcing Troy coach Scott Cross to call a timeout.
Williams missed the ensuing free throw, but Oweh found Brea for a dunk on Kentucky’s next possession. That capped the 10-0 run, which took less than two minutes to materialize. UK led 35-24 by the end of it, and the Cats took a 35-27 lead into halftime.
Before Noah hit his 3-pointer to get that flurry started, UK had missed seven of their first eight attempts from deep.
Oweh and Brea hit back-to-back 3-pointers to start the second half for the Cats, who finished the game at 10-for-26 from long range.
Troy (23-11), which finished in a four-way tie for first place in the Sun Belt standings and then romped to the conference tournament title — winning every game there by double digits — was playing in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2017 and just the third time ever.
The Trojans entered the game at No. 94 nationally in the KenPom ratings.
This story was originally published March 21, 2025 at 9:23 PM.
