‘Man, these guys are here to fight.’ How Kentucky finished off No. 15 Arkansas
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kentucky rallied from a blown double‑digit lead to beat No.15 Arkansas 85‑77.
- Game featured six technicals, physical play, and momentum swings late in Fayetteville.
- Oweh led with 24 points; Pope credited toughness amid injuries and SEC grind.
There were 14 minutes and 11 seconds remaining on the clock.
Kentucky was up three points on No. 15 Arkansas.
Mark Pope’s team hadn’t trailed John Calipari’s squad all night long.
And the Cats were cooked.
That was the overwhelming feeling inside Bud Walton Arena at that moment, at least.
UK’s 13-point lead from earlier in the evening had all but evaporated. The past 38 seconds of play had seen not one, not two, but three technical fouls — all of them going against the Cats.
When lead referee Doug Shows turned around and whistled one on Pope — “T” number three in virtually no time at all — the place went nuts.
Bud Walton — typically the most raucous venue the Wildcats see all season long, no matter who’s patrolling the sidelines — had been relatively tepid to that point in the proceedings. Pope’s team had taken the fans out of it, for the most part, by landing the early punches. But Kentucky hadn’t knocked out Calipari’s Hogs, and here came the reckoning.
Razorbacks super freshman Darius Acuff Jr. stepped to the line and made two free throws. Kentucky still led 51-50, but the visiting sideline was stewing just the same. And the Arkansas fans were twice as loud as they’d been all night.
The Hogs inbounded the ball. Acuff handed it off to Billy Richmond III, and the sophomore wing — a former Kentucky commitment, back when Calipari called Lexington home — drove around the entire Wildcats’ defense and crammed one home with the utmost authority.
What had seemed loud a few moments earlier transformed into something else altogether.
Arkansas had the lead for the first time all night. It was bedlam inside Bud Walton Arena. Those in blue looked rattled, and who wouldn’t have been by that point?
Curtains for the Cats? Not quite.
In a college basketball season that’s now 22 games old, this Kentucky team has already been given up for doomed on several occasions.
Blowing a double-digit lead on the road against the SEC’s top-ranked team while the man many UK fans want to beat more than anyone else presides over the comeback might’ve been a fitting chapter in the Cats’ roller-coaster ride.
But that’s not how this one ended.
When the second half was finally finished — and the buzzer sounded on a game that featured six technicals, a flagrant foul and multiple on-court skirmishes — Kentucky had come out on top.
“We’re on a journey,” Pope said after the 85-77 victory. “And it might not be the journey that anybody anticipated. But I love it. I tell you, I’ve never coached a team like this. To be dead and buried like we were — and to take all the heat and hate that these guys have taken — and then just keep saying, ‘You know what? Doesn’t matter. We’re coming back, man. We’re coming back.’”
The Cats could’ve caved when it all went sideways Saturday night. Instead, they pulled out their most impressive result of the 2025-26 season.
And on the eve of the anniversary of Calipari’s upset win over Kentucky in Rupp Arena last year, Pope pulled out his biggest victory as UK’s coach.
This one was a head-scratcher from the start.
The Cats made 10 of their first 11 shots from the field, going up 24-11 on a 3-pointer by Denzel Aberdeen to cap that unlikely flurry, which came four days after a dreadful start in which Aberdeen was the only UK player to make a shot in the first 12 minutes of what turned out to be an 80-55 loss at Vanderbilt. Kentucky was 3 for 20 in the opening stretch of that one.
But the Cats couldn’t miss early on in Fayetteville. They never trailed in the first half. In each of their first eight games away from Rupp this season, they’d fallen behind by double digits.
In this one, they took a 42-35 lead into halftime. That was a first in nine games outside Lexington so far and just the third time against 15 high-major opponents that Kentucky led at the break.
Things got chippy at the end of that first half. An altercation under the Arkansas basket led Pope and Calipari to venture onto the court — along with several assistants from both sides — in an attempt to calm things down. The result of that encounter: offsetting technical fouls on Otega Oweh and Richmond.
It was just the beginning.
With Kentucky up 51-46 and 14:49 left, UK’s Brandon Garrison knocked Acuff to the floor and then stood over him. Those two went chest to chest, and Garrison was whistled for a technical.
Arkansas missed both free throws, but the crowd — already stirring amid the Hogs’ comeback attempt — took interest.
Later on the very same possession, Acuff was driving toward the rim for what looked like an easy bucket, but Mouhamed Dioubate blocked it from behind and then said something — “Yeah, boy!” it seemed — into an ESPN camera on the baseline.
Shows immediately T’d him up. Dioubate was dumbfounded, pointing out that he was yelling into the camera, not at Acuff, who went on to make the two ensuing free throws.
As Kentucky tried to get the ball across halfcourt on its next possession, Pope was hounding Shows the entire way down the sideline. And after the Cats got called for a 10-second violation, Pope was hit with the team’s third technical in 38 seconds.
Acuff made two more free throws. Richmond threw down that dunk. The place went bananas.
“I would like to clean up all three of those technicals,” Pope said. “I’d like us to have just a tiny bit more discipline. But what I love about that stretch is the guys’ fight and determination. …
“We felt right. The techs were after really extraordinarily competitive plays. And so we definitely have to be a little more disciplined, but the gym felt good at that point. It felt like, ‘Man, these guys are here to fight.’ So yes, we can clean up a little bit, but I wouldn’t trade the heart of it for anything.”
Oweh answered on the other end with a layup to retake the lead for Kentucky. Acuff followed that with a 3-pointer and then a layup to give the Hogs a four-point advantage. It stayed close from there, and then it turned again on another technical.
With the game tied at 63 and 8:02 left, Arkansas’ Malique Ewin was hit for one after dropping the ball on Dioubate and then stepping over the prone Wildcat.
Kentucky hit five free throws before any more time ticked off the clock. Malachi Moreno dunked one home a short time later to give the Cats a 70-63 lead, and the game was never tied again.
“I knew the game was going to be physical,” Calipari said. “I told them. ‘And it may be a little chippy.’ And I said, ‘But you cannot get a technical or do something that costs us the game.’
“And it’s exactly what happened.”
Calipari gave the Cats plenty of credit in the end.
“This was Kentucky coming in, more desperate than us, and played way rougher than we played, and came up with balls that we just didn’t come up with,” he said.
His other star freshman, Meleek Thomas, echoed that.
“I feel that they came out, and they kind of set the tone,” he said. “Instead of us setting the tone.”
Oweh, who scored a game-high 24 points, helped set that tone with his early defense on Acuff, who is in the mix for SEC Player of the Year honors but missed his first five shots from the field Saturday, going 2 for 10 in the first half before going off in the second to finish with 22 points.
“(Oweh) is on his way, man, to proving that he is one of the best in the country, guarding everybody,” Pope said. “And Darius Acuff is as good a player as there is in the country.”
Oweh wasn’t alone. Collin Chandler (13 points), Malachi Moreno (11) and Denzel Aberdeen (10) all scored in double figures. Moreno was constantly in the mix during a rough-and-tumble game down low.
“His poise was unbelievable,” Pope said of the freshman center. “He felt like the biggest guy on the court today.”
Trent Noah had nine points and seven rebounds, battling with the Hogs and ending up on the floor on multiple occasions. Dioubate had five points, five rebounds, three blocks and plenty of plays that don’t end up in the box score.
Four days after that 25-point loss at Vandy — a game in which the Commodores later said they thought they could push around the Cats, and did just that— Pope’s team showed the grit that was needed to pull out these types of wins in these kinds of places.
Calipari said you could go down the stat sheet and form all sorts of conclusions. The biggest takeaway, according to the Hall of Fame coach: “They out-toughed us.”
And what a difference one result can make.
Instead of a loss to Kentucky’s former coach on the heels of a 25-point beatdown in Nashville, the Cats hit the halfway point of SEC play by getting back in the win column.
Kentucky is now 6-3 in college basketball’s toughest league. They’d done it with improbable comebacks and miracle buzzer-beaters. They’d done it while key players like Jayden Quaintance, Jaland Lowe and Kam Williams — all out due to injury — have watched from the sidelines.
And then they went and did it the way they did it Saturday night.
Pope, Oweh and Moreno shared the podium during the postgame press conference, which at one point turned into the three of them going over everything that has happened so far as Oweh tried to figure out where this one ranked on the intensity scale this season.
The Kentucky coach was leaning back in his seat, taking it all in. He smiled.
“We have a lot of drama,” Pope concluded.
This story was originally published January 31, 2026 at 11:57 PM.
