Jasper Johnson turned a corner against Tennessee. But this was the best part
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- Jasper Johnson sparked Kentucky’s comeback, scoring 12 first-half points.
- He added four assists and protected possession, enabling a late-game reset.
- Coach Mark Pope praised Johnson’s decisiveness and increased physicality.
Jasper Johnson’s contributions to Kentucky’s comeback win at Tennessee over the weekend were plentiful. Knowing that makes Mark Pope’s favorite memory from the victory a curious one.
“My favorite play was a nothing,” Pope said Tuesday afternoon, with three full days to think about what had transpired. “It was a nothing.”
It wasn’t one of Johnson’s 3-pointers in the early going to keep the Volunteers from running away with the game. It wasn’t one of his three assists in the second half, each one a key pass to keep the Cats within striking distance.
This play didn’t show up in the box score. And wasn’t a topic of postgame conversation among Kentucky fans. “It’s not a SportsCenter play,” Pope said. “But it’s a play that wins the game.”
With Kentucky down 75-69 and about 4:45 left, Johnson caught a pass from Brandon Garrison as he was cutting toward the basket. There was nothing there, so he attempted to take the ball back out to the perimeter. He almost lost possession, and — while he took a split second to successfully regain control of the ball — two Tennessee defenders quickly swarmed him, in hopes of stealing it away or forcing the freshman guard into a bad decision.
“He had two guys trying to rake the ball away from him — in a very physical, heated, contested moment — and he just said, ‘No!’” Pope recalled Tuesday.
Johnson swung his elbows around twice to protect the ball in his own space, then he passed the ball back out to Garrison near midcourt, where Kentucky was able to reset the possession. The Cats didn’t score on that trip down the floor, but — at a crucial moment amid their comeback from 17 points down — Johnson didn’t turn it over either, denying the Volunteers a chance to get out in transition, find an easy bucket and build on their lead in the final minutes.
“Winning those balls? He’s got incredible skill, but that skill gets unleashed when you win plays like that — that are nothing plays — then you start to unleash all the other stuff, right?” Pope said three days later. “And so that was my favorite moment for him of the whole game.
“And he had magic. The transition 3. Like, slicing and dicing guys. But that was the play that spoke the loudest to me.”
The kind of plays that Kentucky coaches have been waiting to see Johnson make came in abundance Saturday afternoon. In the early going, he kept the Cats in it. All 12 of his points against the Vols came in the first half, after starting point guard Denzel Aberdeen — the hero of the second half — went to the bench with 17:52 still on the clock and two fouls next to his name.
Johnson was 5 for 6 from the field in the first half. He was the first Wildcat off the bench and played 13 minutes in the period. One of his 3s ended an 11-0 Tennessee run that had put the Cats in a 20-8 hole. Late in the half — with UK down 17 — he hit a jumper that ignited a 7-0 run and ultimately sent Kentucky to the halftime locker room down only 11 points.
Tennessee coach Rick Barnes pointed to that flurry afterward as a key point in the game.
But everyone already knew Johnson could score. His sheer talent in that regard is undeniable. Pope himself has said it on many occasions, even while Johnson’s playing time hasn’t been there.
After the UK coach announced last week that starting point Jaland Lowe would miss the rest of the season with an injury, he pointed to Johnson as one of the players likely to get a boost in PT as a result. Before Kentucky’s game at LSU — the first of the “post-Lowe” schedule — Pope was asked what drew him most to Johnson as a recruit.
“Well, you can’t watch Jasper and not be intrigued by his ability to score the ball,” he said. “He’s really, really slippery. So that’s kind of his special sauce.”
That’s what made him stand out as a high school prospect. But to stand out at the college level — playing for Kentucky, playing against SEC teams — he would have to show something more. And that’s what UK’s coaches had spent the previous months trying to get out of him.
In that LSU game, Johnson played only eight minutes. He missed all four shots he took and didn’t register a counting stat anywhere else in the box score. He didn’t even play in the second half.
Opportunity lost? Only for a day.
What he did in the first half in Knoxville helped keep the Cats in it. What happened next is what should have raised the eyebrows of anyone paying attention.
Jasper Johnson’s growing impact
After scoring 12 points in 13 minutes in the first half, Johnson didn’t take a shot and played only six minutes in the second. In Pope’s mind, it might have been the best half of his college career so far.
In those six minutes, Johnson dished out three assists. All of them came with clear intent.
On the first one, the ball came to him in the corner. Rather than force a contested 3 or try to drive around the closeout — as he might’ve done a month ago — Johnson popped a whiplash pass to Aberdeen on the wing. Johnson knew exactly what he was going to do with the ball before it got there, and his teammate made the 3-pointer to cut Tennessee’s lead to 58-54.
A little while later, he got it on the wing and ball-faked just well enough to get his defender off balance, allowing him to penetrate just far enough to draw a help defender. As soon as that help came, Johnson kicked it back out to Otega Oweh — open as a result of Johnson’s dribble move — and Oweh nailed the 3-pointer to get the Cats within 65-62.
The very next trip down the court, Johnson got the ball deep on the wing and held onto it for less than a second before throwing a long entry pass to Malachi Moreno, who had gained an angle on his man — something Johnson clearly saw in real time — and Moreno scored a bucket, drew a foul and hit the and-one free throw to make it a 67-65 game.
Johnson also assisted Mouhamed Dioubate with a deft pass in the first half.
“He’s been patient all year, with his minutes and stuff,” Dioubate said. “I tell him, every time, ‘Your time’s gonna come. Just stay ready for it.’ He stays in the gym. He watches film. And when his name was called today, he was ready for it.”
Kentucky scored 10 points off Johnson’s four assists Saturday afternoon. Tennessee scored one point off the only turnover he committed during 19 minutes on the floor, playing with the ball in his hands for much of that time.
Of the nine different lineups that played more than two minutes together in Knoxville, the top two — as far as points per possession — both featured Johnson on the floor. Those two groups — Johnson alongside Aberdeen, Collin Chandler, Dioubate and either Moreno or Garrison — outscored Tennessee 19-11 over five minutes and 43 seconds. The deeper postgame analytics said it was Johnson’s best performance of the season.
His play Saturday was a major departure from what he often showed early in the season, and what those who followed the central Kentucky native’s high school career grew accustomed to seeing.
Instead of dancing around with the ball — trying to dribble his way into something good or dribble his way out of trouble — Johnson spent Saturday afternoon playing a much more decisive, intentional brand of basketball.
When he got the ball, it didn’t stick.
“I thought he was really decisive,” Pope said. “Jasper, when he can just be really decisive, it helps him be more forceful. He’s got a very probing, slippery nature to his game, which is one of his talents. And right now we’re pushing him to be really decisive. It adds to his physicality. He made big plays for us in this game.”
Pope has talked about the “force” behind Johnson’s game in the past. He wants Johnson to be assertive and aggressive without being reckless. Fewer plays that might benefit Johnson, more plays that have a higher likelihood of benefitting the team.
“He was great,” Pope said Saturday. “In a really tough environment. This is one of the best defensive teams in the country — every single year, and this year is no exception — and their guards put so much pressure on. And their gap help is so great, and they’re so physical. And for Jasper to be as efficient and decisive as he was tonight is a great sign for him that he’s gonna have a great future in this game. Proud of him.”
And he was most proud of that last play toward the end of the game. Instead of shooting or dribbling himself into trouble, instead of forcing something that never had a chance or panicking when he briefly lost his handle, Johnson gathered the ball and himself, used some physicality and made that “nothing pass” — Pope’s words — to give the Cats another chance.
It wasn’t a flashy play. But it was the right play. The 12 points and four assists were nice, too.
“And so he made great plays tonight that people appreciated,” Pope said. “He made some that people won’t appreciate. But he is coming, man. He should be happy and proud, because he’s getting better and better and better.”
This story was originally published January 21, 2026 at 5:00 AM.
