Otega Oweh has called his shot. Can he save this Kentucky basketball season?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Otega Oweh pledged leadership and defensive focus to salvage Kentucky season.
- Kentucky showed uneven defense and 0-4 record versus quality opponents.
- Immediate test vs Indiana and SEC slate demand consistent stops, intensity
In the aftermath of Kentucky’s 103-67 victory over North Carolina Central on Tuesday night, it was Mark Pope’s fiery demeanor — during and especially after the game — that got most of the attention.
Otega Oweh’s mea culpa might have been the more interesting development that night. And what the Wildcats’ biggest star had to say — if he follows through on it in the coming days and weeks — could be the key to saving a UK basketball season that is teetering on the brink.
Oweh held court with reporters for nearly 20 minutes after Tuesday’s game, and while there’s plenty to dissect in what he said, one declaration made clear that he hasn’t lost faith in a team that started out with national title aspirations but has gone 0-4 against quality competition instead.
“I’m surprised, but I feel like everything happens for a reason,” Oweh said. “I feel like this is probably gonna be one of the most remembered years for all of us, individually, because we’re gonna turn it around. So it’s gonna end up being the best year. It wasn’t the prettiest start.”
No, it wasn’t. But there’s a lot of season left, starting with Indiana in Rupp Arena on Saturday night and St. John’s in Atlanta the Saturday after that. Eighteen SEC games also await. Lots of opportunities to turn things around.
Everyone inside the UK basketball orbit is hoping this season has already hit its low point. It can’t possibly get much lower than that short plane ride home from Nashville last Friday night, when the Wildcats were left licking their wounds after a 35-point loss to Gonzaga in front of a pro-UK crowd that booed them several times throughout the evening.
Oweh recapped that flight a few nights later. It was quiet, he said. The Cats were embarrassed. The next day, Pope said his star player came out and had his best practice as a Kentucky player. That included last season, too, when Oweh was the leading scorer on a UK team that might have made it to the Final Four if injuries hadn’t derailed the momentum.
By just about any metric, Oweh’s performance his next time out — that 103-67 win over North Carolina Central — was his best of the season. He had 21 points, seven rebounds and four steals. Those numbers came against the worst team on UK’s schedule, so take them with a grain of salt. The deeper analytics — as well as the eyeballs — said this was the version of Oweh that Kentucky’s coaches, teammates and fans had been waiting to see all season.
“I thought he was great,” Pope said.
The UK coach pointed out that one of the only positive takeaways from the first half — in which the Cats struggled at the beginning and were, as a team, pitiful defensively yet again — was Oweh’s play on NCC leading scorer Gage Lattimore, who was averaging 19.5 points per game coming in and was 1 for 10 from the floor with just two points at halftime.
“And (Oweh) was pretty much solely responsible for that,” Pope said. “And this is a guy that averaged 20 points a game — is a good player, they run a lot of actions for him — and Otega kind of took that on and said, ‘Hey, I’m going to make sure that we handle this.’”
That’s the lead-by-example stuff that Oweh is known for. But he’s slowly come to realize that leading by example just isn’t going to cut it this season. He’s no longer “the young guy” — the only junior in last season’s starting five, on a roster filled with fifth-year seniors — and he knows it.
“And I think he’s really trying to rally the guys,” Pope said. “He’s trying to show some leadership. He played well on both ends of the ball tonight. Otega is really important for us, and he’s carrying a big load. And he’s got to. That’s what you do. That’s your job. And he’s going to continue to grow into that. We need him to be great moving forward.”
Otega Oweh and Kentucky’s defense
Pope hadn’t been pleased with Oweh’s play leading up to Tuesday night. The coach was never overly critical of the SEC preseason player of the year, but read between the lines and some of his comments made clear that Oweh’s play left a lot to be desired.
On the eve of the Gonzaga game, Pope agreed “100%” that, with Oweh, the production begins on the defensive end.
“Listen, Otega averaged 16 or 17 points a game,” he said. “He was one of the leading scorers in the entire SEC. How incredible is it that his superpower is being the best defensive player in the country, and he just manufactures almost 20 points a game? Like, that is the money. Like, that’s why he is so special. That’s why he’s the SEC preseason player of the year. And that’s why he’s gonna have a chance to play in the (NBA) is because his superpower is on the defensive end.”
Pope’s point: Embrace that.
“And it’s something you pay for,” he continued. “At every level, that’s a valued, valued commodity. And he knows it. He believes it. He lives it. And he’s just trying to put it into play right now, and I think he’s making massive progress on just loving the fact that he was built to be that player. Because not very many people ever get to be that player.”
The Pope-Oweh relationship is an interesting one. Both parties sat down, separately, to talk about it with the Herald-Leader during the preseason. They each described an almost-cat-and-mouse game of trying to get and stay on the same page over the course of last season, a process — one that was clearly not yet complete — of getting to know and trust each other on and off the court.
Pope and Oweh had a lot of one-on-one meetings last season. And over the spring, summer and fall. Those talks have continued in recent weeks. Pope, it seems, has seen a player trying to do too much, either to live up to those massive preseason expectations — team and individual — or fulfill his dreams of becoming an NBA draft pick. Or, most likely, both.
“He kind of really opened my eyes to it,” Oweh said Tuesday night.
The message there: Keep it simple. When Oweh wants to be, he’s a defensive monster capable of locking in on the other team’s best scorer and disrupting everything that player wants to do.
“I’m just trying to set the tone,” he said. “I feel like it kind of starts with me. Defensively, having a high motor — even my defensive intensity — I feel like that will set the tempo and the pace for offense, as well. I feel like when my energy is up and my motor is high, I feel like we’re better.”
If he can do that from the start, everything else should fall into place. And, if it doesn’t — if he falls short of scoring 20 or it doesn’t generate transition offense — he’s still done his very best on the defensive end.
“So that’s really what it is, just focusing on one thing — focusing on the best thing I do — and then watch how everything else unfolds,” he said.
Now, Oweh is just one player. He can’t guard five guys at once, and he can’t overplay help defense in a way that’s going to lead to better looks elsewhere. Him trying to be that lockdown defender is a start, but others will have to pick up the slack. Tuesday was a fine example of that.
According to the adjusted efficiency numbers, the 103-67 win over NC Central was Kentucky’s second-worst display of team defense this season. The only performance that was poorer happened four nights earlier in that 94-59 loss to Gonzaga.
According to those same metrics, Oweh played his second-best defensive game of the season against NC Central. It was just a tick behind his showing against Loyola (Maryland) last month, a game that came — not coincidentally — three days after a 17-point loss to Michigan State, the other major embarrassment on the Wildcats’ schedule so far.
That was the night Pope used the phrase, “Welcome back, my friend!” to describe what he had seen from his best player against Loyola. And then came a 67-64 loss to North Carolina in Rupp and that debacle against Gonzaga.
Oweh said his team showed no energy against the Zags, especially after shots didn’t fall at the beginning, a dismal stretch that led to a 19-2 hole. “I feel like we just didn’t put up a fight. Like, at all.”
And that’s unacceptable, no matter the opponent, setting or score.
“Losing these high-major games, it kind of takes a toll on you — breaks you down, energy wise,” Oweh said. “But that’s the thing. Instead of that, we got to lean into each other and have the most energy instead of it going down. … We’re gonna flip that.”
He says that starts with him. But leading by example is no longer enough.
Leading a UK basketball turnaround?
Pope busted a clipboard and benched underperformers during Tuesday’s victory. He nearly boiled over again in the press conference that followed. Kentucky’s coach is clearly mad as hell over what’s going on with his team, and when it was his star player’s turn to talk, Oweh let everyone know that he wasn’t going to take it anymore either.
Some players in similar spots might have been short with their answers or combative when the criticism started coming at them, but Oweh was neither Tuesday night. He listened with genuine interest and responded in kind.
He knew he had become a lightning rod for the fan angst surrounding this season. “I saw it all,” Oweh said of the criticism directed his way, describing the performance against Gonzaga as “nasty” and deeming those who had problems with him “justified” in their response.
“You can’t look at it like, ‘Oh, they’re attacking me,’” he said. “You just gotta learn from it.”
Oweh, now a senior himself, with only a couple dozen or so games as a college player ahead of him, is still learning. He’s learning what he means to this team. He knows he needs to lead it.
Talk of off-the-court issues elicited laughter. “We all good,” he said. “Like, it ain’t nothing off the court.” On that subject, Oweh was emphatic, as were Trent Noah and Jasper Johnson, the other two UK players made available to reporters Tuesday night.
“This is all on the court,” Oweh said.
Kentucky has fallen short there, no doubt about it. When times have gotten the toughest for these Wildcats, they’ve been a rudderless bunch. Oweh claims that time is coming to an end.
He didn’t have to lead last season. But now he’s one of just four returnees — alongside Noah, Collin Chandler and Brandon Garrison — the only senior in the bunch and the SEC preseason player of the year on top of that.
“I mean, I’m the leader,” he said. “I’m the oldest guy here. I was here last year — along with Trent, Collin, BG, obviously — but I feel like a lot of the guys, they look to me to set the example. So a lot of it is on me on why our intensity, I feel like, hasn’t been there.”
Oweh isn’t the most vocal guy — even when he delivers insightful quotes in interview settings, they come in a soft, calm tone — but he says he has no problem verbally telling teammates what to do and holding them accountable when they don’t. He’s just never had to do it before.
To this point, he’s been the lead-by-example guy. But the time for that has passed, and Oweh is starting to fully understand that he can do things that others simply can’t.
“That’s kind of what some of the coaches and (grad assistants) have been telling me — that I gotta get out of that, of leading by example,” he said. “Because not everyone could do certain things. So it’s gonna be the vocal piece. So, yeah, that’s what I got to work on and do better.
“Obviously, playing with a super-high motor, super intentional, and the intensity high. But, on top of that, I gotta be vocal. I gotta call stuff out.”
Oweh is saying all the right things. Now’s the time to follow through with actions.
It starts Saturday night with Indiana, a team that was ranked a week ago and beat Penn State 111-72 on Tuesday night. In that game, 6-foot-6 guard Lamar Wilkerson — a UK recruiting target in the portal last spring — scored 44 points and went 10 for 15 from 3-point range.
Any guesses as to who might get that defensive assignment Saturday night? Whoever Oweh is guarding, if he’s true to his word, that player will have to earn every good look he gets. And maybe that will be the start of something new.
“Intensity from the jump. We gotta be sharp, on point,” Oweh said. “I feel like, defensively, we got to be on point. If our defensive intensity is on point, that kind of sets the tempo for the game. I feel like when we get out in transition and get stops, that’s when we’re at our best. So we got to get stops first to get out in transition. And that’s really what it is.
“We just got to come in and be tired of the same old thing. Just gotta fix it.”
