‘We’re running out of guys.’ But Kentucky basketball had enough to beat Ole Miss
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kentucky beat Ole Miss 72-63 ahead of a snowstorm, accelerating fans’ and teams’ exit
- Nine available players combined for balanced scoring and key defensive plays
- Coach Mark Pope credited role players after injuries sidelined three starters
On a day like this one, you do your best to get a win and then you get the heck out of the building.
That’s exactly what the Kentucky Wildcats did Saturday, and they made early work of it.
UK and Ole Miss tipped off at 11:01 a.m. ET, the start time moved up an hour to get the game in and get people out of Rupp Arena as quickly as possible with a major winter storm bearing down on Lexington.
By the time the buzzer sounded, the scoreboard signaled a fifth consecutive victory for the Wildcats — Kentucky 72, Ole Miss 63, it read — and an announcement was made that fans should head for the exits as quickly as possible.
The regularly scheduled postgame radio show — with Mark Pope talking from the Rupp court — was canceled. Get home safe, and get out now. That was the general vibe in the arena.
The snow started to fall — more than a foot was expected with this storm — around that time, and Ole Miss coach Chris Beard and the rest of his Rebels opted to retreat home to Oxford rather than stick around for the postgame interview sessions.
Pope spoke quickly from the podium. “Guys, be safe. Get home!” he declared before heading for the exit himself. Kentucky’s players talked less than usual as everyone attempted to clear the building.
Under other circumstances, every Wildcat who played Saturday might have had something to say. Each of them had done something to contribute to another Kentucky victory.
Otega Oweh was the star of the show (again), scoring 20 points in the second half alone and finishing with 23 after spending most of the first half on the bench due to foul trouble. But he spent most of his 10-minute postgame Q&A talking about teammates who also came up big.
Collin Chandler scored 12 points, matched a career high with seven rebounds and hit the biggest shot of the night. Jasper Johnson gave the Cats some momentum off the bench in first half and ended up with 11 points.
Denzel Aberdeen led the team with five assists. Malachi Moreno was tops with nine rebounds. Andrija Jelavic was second in both categories with seven boards and three assists. Brandon Garrison had five boards. Trent Noah contributed three steals.
Mouhamed Dioubate did a little bit of everything, tallying six points, three rebounds and two blocked shots, bringing physicality throughout the day and coming up with a huge play that led to Chandler’s big shot toward the end.
And that’s everybody.
“We’re getting contributions from every single guy on this team,” Pope said. “We don’t have that many, so we’re kind of using everybody we have. And we’re gonna have to do that, because we’re running out of guys.”
This was Kentucky’s first game without starting wing Kam Williams, who broke his foot during the Cats’ win over Texas on Wednesday night and had surgery Friday. Pope hasn’t ruled him out for the season, but he’ll have a difficult road back with only two months or so remaining.
This was the fifth straight game UK played without projected NBA lottery pick Jayden Quaintance, who remains sidelined with swelling in his surgically repaired knee. It was the fourth straight without Jaland Lowe, who was ruled out for the season with a shoulder injury two weeks ago and was not in Rupp on Saturday afternoon as he prepares for surgery.
Three key players down, yet these Wildcats keep on winning.
“I think every team takes on a unique character,” Pope said. “It’s one of the fun things about a season. So it’s fun to see what’s special about a group of guys. And the specialness of this group might not be what I anticipated exactly, but there’s some real specialness right now in terms of these guys just gutting it out together and individual guys just finding some way to impact the game while they’re on the floor.
“All nine guys that we have had a major impact on this game. Every single player that can play on our roster came into this game and had a significant, significant impact. So that’s actually super cool. It’s a team sport. It’s what you’re doing, and I love it.”
The first half was ugly, yet again. Kentucky led 29-23 at the break.
“I actually thought the first half was incredible,” Pope said afterward, a smile on his face. “I mean, what, it’s been a month since we had a lead at the end of the half? I thought it was amazing. I’ll take that every time.”
It had actually been only two weeks, but that halftime lead against Mississippi State on Jan. 10 was Kentucky’s only other one this season in 13 games against high-major competition. The Cats had to come back from double-digit deficits in the first half to beat Mississippi State, LSU and Tennessee, and they were tied with Texas at halftime Wednesday night.
Johnson was Kentucky’s top scorer in the first half Saturday morning. With UK down 15-11, he rattled off eight points in 94 seconds to kickstart what turned into an 18-4 run for the Wildcats. Before Johnson went off, UK had missed 13 of its first 16 shots.
“Yeah, my son did good, bro. He was hoopin’,” Oweh said of his young teammate. “It’s only a matter of time. I feel like Jasper is so confident that any shot is bound to go in. It’s just a matter of if the hoop is messing with him that day. But he came in, and he was a spark for us. … But Jasper, he could do that with his eyes closed.”
Oweh was quick to point out the “spark” that Noah provided in the first half, too. After playing sparingly in Kentucky’s first six SEC games — just six minutes total in that stretch — the Harlan native played 11 minutes Saturday, hitting his first 3-pointer since Dec. 9 and coming up with those three steals.
All nine UK players who appeared in Saturday’s game played double-digit minutes. And there was plenty of dirty work to go around against an opponent that thrives on playing a physical style.
Pope called Beard a “great coach” who does a good job of “mucking up the game” and always presents challenging matchups for opponents.
“You just understand that it’s going to be a mucky-muck game,” he said. “And it’s not really about fixing it and making it beautiful. It’s about, ‘Can you keep your mentality focused, even through the frustration?’ Our guys did a good job doing that.”
It was a collective effort, even if it was a mostly frustrating 40 minutes of basketball.
Ole Miss briefly tied the game at 39 with 13:51 left. Kentucky took the lead back 44 seconds later and never trailed in the second half, but it wasn’t easy. From the 15:45 mark to basically the very end of the game, Ole Miss was never down by more than six points.
Several times down the stretch, Oweh came up with a big bucket — or got to the free-throw line — to give the Cats a little extra cushion. The biggest sequence of the game came courtesy of a couple of his teammates.
After Moreno made the first of two free throws to give Kentucky a 63-60 lead with 1:05 remaining, the freshman center missed the second, which would have made it a two-possession game. But instead of giving Ole Miss an opportunity to tie, Dioubate fought for the offensive rebound, leading to a jump ball, which kept possession in UK’s favor.
On the ensuing play, Aberdeen found Chandler, who canned a 3-pointer to put the Cats up 66-60 with 47 seconds left. A few folks headed for the exits right then, clearly hoping to beat some of their fellow fans to the parking lot and get a head start home.
The Cats had a little more to do before they could join them. And Pope was talking a mile a minute after the win, sure to spread around the praise for this victory. Of Chandler’s shot, the UK coach was especially proud.
“He loves the moment. He wants it. He wants the moment,” Pope said. “… He wants that shot. And you have to be wired a little different to do that. It’s fun to watch him grow.”
Pope reminded everyone that Chandler volunteered to throw the inbounds pass that led to Moreno’s miracle buzzer-beater at LSU a week and a half earlier. He’s scored in double figures in all three of Kentucky’s games since then, including a career-high 18 points (while sick) in the win over Texas on Wednesday and four big 3s in the upset victory at Tennessee last weekend.
Chandler has stepped up in recent games. But so has everyone else on this Kentucky team.
As this season wears on, Pope is going to need production from everyone. And the nine Wildcats still left standing are well aware of that assignment.
“For sure,” Chandler said. “We’re going to need everybody to step up and learn new roles. It feels like our roles are everchanging, so we’re learning to adapt. And we need more. We need more out of everybody. And that’s what you want as a basketball player. You want a bigger role. You want to step in and help the team win.
“And so I think we’ve done a great job the last few weeks in doing that.”
