What more can Otega Oweh do to help Kentucky basketball win?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- UK basketball has lost games to Georgia and Auburn despite strong play from Otega Oweh.
- Oweh set a new career high with 29 points scored against Auburn.
- Kentucky has lost three straight games for the first time under coach Mark Pope.
As this Kentucky basketball season veers off the rails once again, the star player at its core has continued to deliver on the offensive end.
Otega Oweh — the SEC’s preseason player of the year whose senior season got off to a slow start — has been pouring in the points of late.
Oweh matched his career high with 28 points last Tuesday night against Georgia. On Saturday, Oweh went one better and set a new career best with 29 points for the Wildcats on the road at Auburn.
One problem. UK lost both games.
Kentucky (17-10, 8-6 SEC) finds itself staring up at the league standings just one week after playing a game at Florida with first place on the line. This is the situation Mark Pope’s team finds itself in, despite Oweh raising his level of performance.
“We had multiple times we could have won it. I thought we were beating ourselves. We just got a bad whistle at the end,” Oweh told UK radio broadcaster Jack “Goose” Givens on Saturday, referencing the controversial foul call that contributed to UK’s loss at Auburn. “... It’s an unfortunate call, but even with that, we still could have won.”
Pope was happier with Oweh’s outing at Auburn than he was with the Georgia game.
In the aftermath of Tuesday’s home loss to Georgia, it was clear Pope wasn’t thrilled with Oweh’s performance, despite the 28 points. Part of that likely had to do with Oweh’s four turnovers. It also likely had something to do with Georgia’s second-half success on offense.
“Otega’s standard is incredibly high. It might be a higher standard than just about any other player in the country,” Pope said Thursday. “When I talk about being frustrated and disappointed, I know that he looks at it, he’s like ‘Hey, there’s good stuff there.’ But his standard is so high that he wants more, and he should.”
What about Saturday at Auburn?
Despite battling foul trouble, Oweh again led the Cats with 29 points on 11-for-20 shooting. He got to the foul line eight times, the most of any player. Oweh’s seven rebounds matched a team high. He also contributed three assists. The Wildcats outscored the Tigers by five points in his 35 minutes on the floor.
“He was unbelievable. What he overcame and who he overcame tonight,” Pope said Saturday during his postgame press conference. “A lot of times it felt like he was playing one on seven, one on eight. Sometimes that happens. I thought he was brilliant.”
Yet the end result was the same, with Oweh helpless as Auburn sophomore Elyjah Freeman skied for the winning tip-in with less than two seconds to play.
“Our physicality still, our rebounds, our transition defense,” Oweh said of areas where UK still needs to improve. “I feel like we play good transition defense in spurts, but we have to do that for a full 40 (minutes).”
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Throughout Kentucky’s current three-game losing streak — the longest with Pope as head coach — Pope has pointed to fatigue as an issue. UK has been reduced to just nine healthy scholarship players for the past eight games.
That means Oweh has logged plenty of hard minutes in college basketball’s toughest conference. Oweh has averaged 34.5 minutes per game over UK’s eight contests since Jan. 24. He’s scored at least 20 points in seven of those games.
Kentucky is 4-4 in that span, though, with the losses including the ongoing three-game slide and a generationally lopsided defeat at Vanderbilt.
Oweh carries a massive load for the Cats. In addition to being the team’s primary offensive engine and creator, he’s often tasked with shutting down the best offensive player on the opposing team. Does this dynamic, coupled with UK’s rough injury outlook, force Oweh to strike a balance when on the floor?
“There’s no balance in this game,” Pope said Thursday. “We have to do what we have to do, right? That doesn’t mean it’s easy. That might mean that it’s hard to approach the level that he’s striving for, but there’s not a lot of balance. We’ve got to guard, and we’ve got to make plays for each other and we’ve got to play with pace. That’s what we do, and that’s what he’s doing. That’s why he’s who he is. What Otega Oweh is doing, right now, is pretty historic, it’s incredibly impressive, and he wants more.”
There’s no doubt the history books will be kind to Oweh when his UK basketball career ends.
Oweh is one of eight players in Division I men’s hoops this season to have scored at least 10 points in each of his team’s games. For his UK career, Oweh has reached double figures in 60 of his 63 games. He’s already reached the 1,000-point scoring mark at Kentucky, and Oweh (1,065 points at UK) will soon pass the likes of Dirk Minniefield and Rex Chapman on the all-time scoring chart.
But Oweh is hoping to achieve these personal accolades in the context of team success. That’s a bit of a moving target for these Wildcats, who are now firmly out of the race for the SEC regular season championship.
Given what UK’s schedule looks like for the rest of the regular season, securing a double bye for the SEC Tournament — an honor which goes to the league’s top-four finishers— would be quite an achievement.
Then there’s the matter of the NCAA Tournament, where the Wildcats would do well to match last season’s trip to the Sweet 16.
All the while, Oweh’s steady play goes on.
“Just gotta keep on playing hard and now... I’m going to try and do the best I can do, but we just gotta get some wins,” Oweh said.
