‘We need him.’ This Kentucky Wildcat came up clutch in the win at South Carolina
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- Denzel Aberdeen scored 19, hit four 3s and had zero turnovers to lead Kentucky.
- Kentucky overcame a season-high 15 turnovers and Oweh’s 8 points to win 72-63.
- Multiple role players supplied rebounds and timely shots to snap the skid.
Otega Oweh proved mortal on offense Tuesday night.
And that meant the Kentucky Wildcats needed a scoring lift from somewhere else.
Denzel Aberdeen to the rescue.
Several players stepped up at various moments in UK’s 72-63 victory at South Carolina, offering just enough for the Wildcats to snap a three-game losing skid in what looked to be the final matchup all season in which they’ll be favored.
It was Aberdeen who set the tone.
Things got off to a rough start (again) for a Kentucky team that’s endured plenty of those.
South Carolina, which came into the night ranking 15th in the SEC in 3-point percentage, made four of its first six long-range shots and took a 12-5 lead from the jump.
As that was happening, the Wildcats missed seven of their first eight shots — seven straight misfires, actually, after Collin Chandler canned a 3-pointer on UK’s first attempt of the night — and Aberdeen ended that skid with a bucket a little more than four minutes in.
South Carolina was still leading — and the Cats were still scuffling, at 1 for 9 on 3-pointers — when Aberdeen went off.
The senior guard nailed three consecutive 3s over a span of less than two minutes midway through the first half to turn a 15-13 deficit into a 22-15 advantage for the Cats, whose 13-0 run at that point in the game was crucial to building a cushion they’d need the rest of the way.
“We needed a game from him,” UK coach Mark Pope said afterward. “He’s been a little quieter the last few games, and I thought he carried us tonight, which we needed. We needed him to do it, and he rose up and got the job done.”
Aberdeen did it while Oweh struggled against a South Carolina defense that was designed primarily to stop him from scoring. That worked. Oweh was held to just eight points and missed 10 of the 13 shots he took from the field. It was the first time all season he’d failed to hit double figures in scoring and just the fourth time that had occurred in 64 games as a Wildcat.
Meanwhile, Aberdeen ended up going 6 for 12 from the field and 4 for 6 from deep, scoring 19 points to lead the Wildcats. And while those three 3-pointers in the first half were big, he was clutch for the Cats all night long.
He helped set the tone on the boards with four rebounds in the first half. (UK outrebounded South Carolina 48-28.) He also had one of his best defensive performances of the season in a game in which UK tallied its best adjusted defensive efficiency rating in SEC play so far.
But his steady hand on offense was perhaps the most noticeable aspect in a game that was otherwise as ugly as it gets.
Kentucky committed a season-high 15 turnovers against the Gamecocks, nearly coughing away a game it needed badly to win. Aberdeen had zero turnovers in nearly 37 minutes on the court. And he led the Cats with five assists.
“For him to be a five-zero in a little bit of a messy game — a little bit of a different energy game — it was important,” Pope said. “His line is just really, really impressive, and he continues to grow into this point guard role. And we’re proud of him. We need him.”
With Jaland Lowe out for the season, Aberdeen — a natural 2 on the positional spectrum — has had to slide over and try his best to be Kentucky’s top playmaker. He’s taken care of the ball well this season — 92 assists to just 36 turnovers — though Pope noted a couple of times Tuesday that he’s been a little “quiet” over the past couple of weeks.
The scoring has been there — this was the fifth straight game that Aberdeen hit double figures — and he’s continued to take care of the ball, but the deeper metrics indicate UK’s three-game skid coincided with less-than-stellar play on his part.
Those same metrics told a different story after Tuesday night, when Aberdeen earned his best player rating (by far) since a herculean effort to carry the Cats to a win at Tennessee last month. The win over South Carolina also marked his second-best defensive rating against an SEC opponent, coming in just behind that game in Knoxville.
This victory wasn’t nearly as impressive as that one, but Aberdeen was glad to have it.
“We just gotta get back to what Kentucky basketball was,” he said. “We had to make sure and get a win. As a matter of fact, the rest of these games, we have to make sure and win. So we just wanted to come in, secure the win and just keep going from here.”
He didn’t do it alone Tuesday night. Mouhamed Dioubate (12 points), Andrija Jelavic (11 points) and Chandler (10 points) all joined him in double figures. Malachi Moreno had 11 rebounds. Brandon Garrison grabbed seven boards. Oweh didn’t let scoring struggles ruin his night, tallying five steals on the other end.
Multiple Cats made key plays down the stretch. Chandler’s 3-pointer with about 1:50 left served as the dagger — another huge shot in crunch time for the sophomore guard who has made that his trademark — putting the Cats ahead 64-57 and taking the wind out of South Carolina’s sails.
Who got him the ball for that one? It was Aberdeen, who waited patiently for Moreno to set a screen and then found Chandler at just the right moment.
“DA made a good read,” Pope said. “And then Collin — that’s just what he does. I mean, he loves it. You guys have watched him this season. You guys all expected it to go in, too, just like he does.”
It gets harder from here.
South Carolina was the lowest-rated team in the conference. Up next will be Vanderbilt (Saturday in Rupp Arena), Texas A&M (next Tuesday in College Station) and Florida (next Saturday in Lexington) — three teams in the top tier of the SEC standings.
For now, Aberdeen was happy with this win. And while he told the SEC Network crew afterward that he wasn’t pitching in to pay the $25,000 fine levied by the league against Pope earlier in the day — the result of postgame comments after the controversial loss at Auburn on Saturday — he was happy to get his coach back in the winning column.
“We love him, man. He goes hard for us, and we know we’re gonna have his back. Each and every day, he’s always bringing the energy — no matter what the ups and downs we’ve been through this year. We’re always staying positive, and he’s just coming in with a positive mindset to win each and every game that we play.
“I know the last three we got a loss, but we just gotta stack it up from here.”
