The beginning of the end of Otega Oweh’s Kentucky basketball career starts now
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Otega Oweh returns to Kentucky for his senior year, bypassing 2025 NBA draft.
- Oweh embraces leadership role as a senior and aims for a national title run.
- Kentucky begins summer preparations with national title goals and top-10 projections.
Over the weekend, while participating in one of the UK basketball summer camps, Otega Oweh took a little break from the court to interview the Wildcats’ head coach.
With the camera rolling, the Kentucky star asked Mark Pope to recount his reaction to the news that Oweh was pulling out of the NBA draft and returning to Lexington for one more season.
Pope recalled that he was on an airplane — “I don’t understand why or how, but the call actually came through!” — and implied that he reacted with such excitement that he was afraid the pilot might threaten to throw him off the flight, so he had to ask Oweh to call him back in a few minutes.
The UK coach then said — to Oweh’s surprise — that there were tears on his face upon receiving the news.
“Because I knew a couple of things,” Pope told him. “I know how excited you are, and how much you want to go play in that league. I know it’s the dream of a lifetime. And it’s super humbling to see you do two things. One, understand how much you want to get better — how committed you are to keep getting better. And the second thing was to see how much you understand and appreciate what you have right now. That’s special stuff, man.”
Oweh, in his first meeting with reporters since returning to Lexington, struck a similar tone Tuesday.
Of course he wants to play in the NBA someday, but — despite buzz that he would have been picked in the second round of this month’s draft — he ultimately decided that now wasn’t the time to make that jump. And he said there was no disappointment on his end regarding that decision.
“Not at all. Because I still could have gone,” Oweh said. “But it was more of like — I had one more year of eligibility and then, you know, try and do the things that maybe I didn’t get to complete last year, which was win a national championship.”
For Oweh and the rest of the 2025-26 Wildcats, that process begins now, with the bulk of the roster already on campus for summer classes and offseason practice set to start next week.
Most of this team will have eligibility remaining beyond the 2025-26 season, but Oweh — along with transfer Denzel Aberdeen and longtime UK walk-on Walker Horn — will be entering his senior year. He knows how quickly a basketball season can go by, and he’s ready to make the most of this one.
Oweh also knows that, on a team filled with newcomers — and there will be six transfers and four freshmen on this UK roster — the summer months are crucial.
This time last year, Pope was just a few weeks into the job and every scholarship player on the team was new to the program. That group featured seven seniors — six of them heading into their fifth year of college — and that made Oweh, a junior, one of the younger guys on the roster.
He made an impression right away back then. Now, he starts summer camp as the team’s leading scorer from a season ago, a veteran of Pope’s system and a candidate for SEC preseason player of the year honors a few months from now.
“But I’m trying to keep the same mindset that I had coming into last summer, which was, you know, just trying to dominate the summer session,” he said. “Just trying to get better every single day. Because this is the most important time of the season, where it’s a lot of new faces. And you just got to set the tone.”
Oweh has talked plenty about the individual gains he can make on the court over the next several months — becoming more of a 3-point threat, improving as a playmaker and continuing to transform his conditioning to an NBA level — but some of his most direct comments Tuesday were on the topic of leadership.
With all those seniors from last season now gone, Oweh finds himself in a new role.
“I’m excited for this new challenge,” he said of stepping up as a leader. “I’ve always been, usually, the youngest guy or one of the younger guys on the team. But now I’m a senior, so it’s crazy. …
“I used to always just want to lead by example. But Coach Pope — and even the older guys — they made it a huge thing to not just lead by example. You have to be vocal, because not everybody can always do what you’re doing when you’re leading by example. So just trying to step out of your comfort zone, and make things work.”
Oweh made it clear that he’s ready to do that.
“I’m definitely gonna have to be one of the leaders, but I’m gonna do it in my own way, really,” he said. “Definitely be vocal, but also be a little intense. I feel like that’s kind of my thing. I like talking a lot — in terms of, like, smack and stuff like that. So it’s gonna challenge people to really have that chip on their shoulder.”
He’s spent only a few days with his new teammates, and the first practice is still a few days away, but Oweh already likes what he sees.
“We started clicking really quickly,” he said, adding that he’s seen everyone in the practice gym on their own, every day since they’ve arrived. “So that’s always a good sign.”
Oweh, who has been sporting a new haircut — he cut off his dreadlocks for the first time in several years, wanting to “try something new” — sang the praises of newcomers like Aberdeen, Alabama transfer Mouhamed Dioubate and presumed starting point guard Jaland Lowe, while predicting big things for fellow returnees Brandon Garrison, Collin Chandler and Trent Noah.
He also acknowledged that this team will be younger than Pope’s first UK roster, with four freshmen and four sophomores among this bunch.
“We got a lot of characters, a lot of young guys who are just excited to be here. And it shows,” Oweh said with a grin. “So that’s always fun, because that’s gonna show in the games and practice.”
Pope used the term “Banner Camp” to refer to this upcoming stretch of the summer last year. The Cats fell short of that goal at the end, ousted in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament. But their projection for the 2025-26 season is even higher this time around — the national outlets peg UK as a top-10ish team — and, whatever Pope chooses to call this summer camp, expectations of a banner by next spring will be even higher in year two.
Oweh touted the talent he’s already seen in the Craft Center practice gym as reason to believe those hopes are realistic.
“We have multiple guys at each position,” he said. “I feel like those are the teams that do best in March. … Because you can switch up lineups. You can keep teams uncertain of what you’re going to do. So, I mean, we have a lot of talent.”
And Oweh, who turns 22 years old next weekend, is at the top of the list, finding himself dishing out advice to younger teammates while not quite believing that this will be his final ride in college basketball.
“Time moves fast,” he said. “You gotta enjoy it.”
This story was originally published June 10, 2025 at 1:11 PM.
