Kentucky’s players finally bought in. The result was their best game this season
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kentucky recovered from early collapse to beat Mississippi State 92-68.
- Coach Pope stuck with a new defensive scout; team tightened defense.
- Ball movement and turnovers fueled offense; Kentucky shot 55% and 41%.
It had been a miserable seven days for Mark Pope, and for the first few minutes of Kentucky’s game against Mississippi State on Saturday, it sure looked like things were, somehow, going to get a whole lot worse.
It had been a week since UK’s uncompetitive loss to Alabama in the SEC opener. It had been three days since the Wildcats blew a late lead to double-digit underdog Missouri in Rupp Arena.
On the eve of the Mississippi State game, it was revealed that Pope’s most promising player wouldn’t even play against the Bulldogs. And less than three minutes into the game itself, perhaps his most important player made a beeline to the UK locker room after getting injured once again.
Not long after that, the Rupp scoreboard read: Mississippi State 16, Kentucky 6.
Pope called a timeout, and there were audible boos. The UK fans had seen this show before.
But this one had a different ending. It just took a little patience from all involved.
That 16-6 deficit wasn’t the low point Saturday night. The Cats trailed 18-6. And they were down 28-17 as the midway point of the first half approached. And then something happened.
Pope’s team stuck with it. It started with the coach himself.
“I want to single out Mikhail McLean,” Pope said after UK’s 92-68 victory over the Bulldogs. “This was his scout, and it was a different scout. We had a different defensive scheme than we’ve played all season long, in multiple ways. And I’ve been pestering him for the last 72 hours.”
Pope needed this win. Badly. Everyone in his orbit knew it. So it was probably no surprise to UK’s youngest assistant coach that his boss called him late Friday night and again early Saturday morning — “Four or five different times,” Pope said — with questions about this particular defensive approach and how it was going to work.
“And he was like, ‘Coach, trust me. This is the way we need to play this game. This is how we need to do it,’” Pope recalled. “And so he did an unbelievable job implementing a game plan for our guys, and we didn’t execute it very well the first five minutes.
“But we stuck with it, and the guys did much better as time went on.”
About those first five minutes, Pope was being kind. The Cats stunk it up defensively right out of the gate. There were glaring breakdowns and clear miscommunications on the court. The result was Mississippi State players with wide-open looks. The Bulldogs made 11 of their first 13 shots.
“And we never actually went away from it,” Pope said. “I was so worried about this that we had backup plan B, C and D. And we never went to them. And it’s hard as an assistant coach to have the confidence and the courage to take a stand and stay with your conviction. And a huge kudos to Mikhail. Just an unbelievable job on the scout.”
Once the Cats got comfortable, they did everything possible to make sure the Bulldogs weren’t.
“We knew what we wanted to do. We knew what we needed to do,” said sophomore guard Kam Williams. “We knew that they were guard heavy, so we just tried to take the guards out of the play as much as possible. When they pass the ball up, try not to let them get it back. … And we knew that they kind of relied on their guards to make the plays the most, and we just tried to make their bigs playmakers, because we didn’t see that. And it worked out.”
It didn’t work out in the first few minutes. But it worked out in the end.
“That’s the reason why we do scouts is to stop the other team from doing what they do best,” said senior guard Otega Oweh. “So I think we did a really good job today on taking the scout from practice and bringing it into the game.”
That’s been a problem this season. Pope has been frustrated by his team’s inability to translate what’s happening in practice to the actual games. Oweh has been frustrated, too. In recent weeks, they haven’t been shy about it.
On this night, it all came together.
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After giving up 18 points in the first five minutes and change, the Wildcats allowed only 50 points for the rest of the game. And as is so often the case in basketball, good play on one end leads to good play on the other.
The final numbers said this was Kentucky’s best offensive performance in nine games against high-major competition this season. The Cats had a 2-6 record in such games before Saturday night. They shot 55.2% from the floor and 40.9% from 3-point range. They dished out 21 assists, five more than their previous best against a high-major team.
“It helps when you make shots, but I think you make shots when you pass your teammate the ball,” Pope said. “And so for us to shoot it 41% and 55%, clearly that helps a lot. But I think that’s a residual of dialing in on that defensive end, so you buy yourself some good opportunities. And really working hard to make plays for your teammate.
“It’s such a simple concept, but to actually put it to work is hard. So, tonight, the guys were excellent doing that for 34 minutes, and we need to carry that on. It’s fun to play the game that way, and it’s something we’re going to learn and grab onto, and it’ll make us a better team.”
Not much fun had been had by these Wildcats this season. The high point came three weeks ago, when Jayden Quaintance made his debut and Jaland Lowe made a comeback from injury, that duo teaming up to help lead UK to a 78-66 victory over St. John’s.
That win seemed like a turning point. And then the Cats were blown out at Alabama and spit the bit against Mizzou. And then Quaintance was ruled out for the Mississippi State game with swelling in his surgically repaired knee. And then Lowe exited the game abruptly, less than three minutes in, with another injury — the fourth since October — to his right shoulder.
With Lowe unable to make the plays, others picked up the slack.
Freshman center Malachi Moreno led Kentucky with six assists.
“I thought he was elite,” Pope said.
Oweh had five assists. Backup point guard Denzel Aberdeen added four.
For the first time all season — against a quality opponent, at least — the ball was moving consistently, and this Kentucky team looked somewhat similar to the one that played such a beautiful game in Pope’s first year on the job.
“It’s amazing what happens when you pass the ball to your teammate a little bit,” the UK coach said. “I was really proud of our guys.”
Oweh scored 22 points. Moreno had 17. Aberdeen added 16, and Williams finished with 14.
But much of it started on the other end. Oweh had five steals. Those five steals led directly to five easy buckets on the other end. Moreno had four steals. Williams had two. The Cats, as a group, finished with 14, the most against an SEC opponent since 2009.
As a group is how they won this one. When someone knocked a ball loose, everyone went flying in transition. UK won fast-break points 19-6 and points off turnovers 27-10. Even if that first transition opportunity didn’t lead to a bucket, the Cats kept the ball moving in the halfcourt, and something good often happened.
“I mean, it’s unbelievable how fun this game can be when you play it with your team,” Pope said. “It just is unbelievable how fun and inspiring and contagious it can be. Like, it’s contagious. We’ve seen that in runs, when we’re getting out in transition, and guys kind of fall in love with making plays for each other. We just haven’t seen it very much in the halfcourt.”
He saw it Saturday night. But he’d seen it before.
“That’s what our teams have always been,” he said, a nod to last season’s UK squad and his BYU teams before that.
More important than Pope seeing it? His players saw it.
“He’s always preaching, ‘Make plays for teammates.’ But it’s on us to actually do it,” Oweh said. “When we get to the game, we got to be really intentional. We have so much talent that, you know, we could break guys down one on one. But that’s kind of what teams want.
“Once we get the ball moving and make them move a couple times and make certain decisions, I feel like that’s when we’re at our best. That’s what we did today. We just let the ball move and do the work for us.”
Can they keep it up? That’s the question.
A home win over a Mississippi State team rated near the bottom of the SEC won’t move the need nationally. But the Cats can’t worry about that at the moment.
“We gotta stack days,” Oweh said. “We got to watch the film on this. And everything that we did, you know, just double back down on it. I feel like the main thing, though, is defense. When we play good defense, we get out in transition, and transition is our bread and butter. So once we get out in transition, I feel like that kind of sets up our halfcourt offense.”
On Saturday night, it all worked. And each aspect of the game — defense, offense, the transition plays in between — were dependent on each other. For perhaps the first time this season, Kentucky’s players allowed themselves to be dependent on each other.
Oweh, the top returnee from Pope’s first UK team, was asked afterward if this game felt like the way the Cats played last season. “No,” he acknowledged. Two totally different styles, he explained.
“I feel like we could get there, though. I feel like we’re super, super talented. It’s just a matter of us all clicking at the same time. I feel like we really haven’t had a game, besides today, that we all played well in one game. So it’s a matter of time.
“Once we continue to make plays for teammates, and continue to get guys open, and make the easy play — that’s going to continue to up our play.”
This story was originally published January 11, 2026 at 1:28 AM.
