‘Not a happy night for us.’ Why the UK-Vandy rematch will be another tough one
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kentucky hosts Vanderbilt in Rupp after losing 80-55 in Nashville.
- Pope urges matching Vandy's physicality; UK also uses a nine-player rotation.
- Kentucky must balance transition offense with fatigue management for Saturday.
Kentucky gets another shot at Vanderbilt on Saturday afternoon.
This game will take place in Rupp Arena, so that’s a plus for the Cats. This one will come under different roster circumstances than the first meeting, so Mark Pope’s team should, presumably, be more comfortable with itself on the court.
And UK’s players will walk into the building Saturday knowing exactly what Vandy is capable of. Surely no one wearing blue back on Jan. 27 will have forgotten much about that night.
If any of them have, this week’s film study is there to serve as a reminder.
The reviews now haven’t changed from when that game was played.
“Well, it’s not fun to watch the film,” Pope said with a slight grin Thursday.
If anyone else needs reminding, that first meeting in Nashville was perhaps the lowest point in a UK basketball season with plenty of candidates for that descriptor.
Vanderbilt beat Kentucky 80-55 in that game. The Commodores led the Cats 7-0 right off the bat. They were up double digits for the entirety of the final 30 minutes. They led UK by 20 at halftime, and the Wildcats never got much closer than that during the second half.
It was an embarrassment for Pope and his team, which entered Memorial Gym on a five-game winning streak and left the building as losers of a lopsided result that had some fans back home all but throwing in the towel on the rest of the season.
Immediately after the beatdown, the Vandy contingent added further insult by saying they thought they could come in and impose their physicality on the SEC’s traditional blue blood, doing just that from the moment the ball was tipped.
The Wildcats were pushed around all night long, knocked off their spots and often a step slow on the kind of hustle plays that teams need to make when facing quality competition.
When it was over, the Cats headed back to Lexington with a 5-3 league record and renewed questions — with some already jumping to conclusions — about how Pope’s second season in charge was going. They managed a three-game winning streak from there — a run bookended by wins at Arkansas and over Tennessee in Rupp — that restored a little faith in where things were headed.
Then came the first three-game losing streak of the Pope era, followed by a return to the win column Tuesday night at South Carolina, the lowest-rated team in the conference and not a conquest that did much to galvanize those who’d lost faith once again.
And that’s where things stand going into Saturday’s rematch, which will come one month and one day after that first meeting in Nashville. What has Pope’s team learned in the time since?
“I think our ability to kind of channel our emotions is better,” he said. “I think our understanding of what it takes to compete in this league every single night is a little bit better. I think our competitive spirit is — I think we’re able to unleash it a little bit better.
“You know, that was not a happy night for us.”
To avoid a repeat, the Cats will need to step things up.
Vandy hit a little rough patch, too, following its win over the Wildcats, going 2-3 in its first five games this month before an 88-80 win over Georgia on Wednesday night. Each team enters the rematch with a 9-6 record in the SEC, but — even in Rupp — the 25th-ranked Commodores are viewed by the analytics sites as the favorites for the 2 p.m. ET tipoff Saturday.
Was the first game simply a bad night for Kentucky? Or is this just a bad matchup for Pope’s team? What’s clear is that Vanderbilt is a solid squad, and Pope is expecting another tough one.
“Vandy is a terrific team,” he said. “... They play with a gritty physicality that’s really impressive. I think their front line is really special. They’re undersized, but they’re really physical.”
Pope started off his synopsis by praising the backcourt of Tyler Tanner — “electric,” the coach called him — and Duke Miles, who missed the first UK game with an injury that ultimately kept him on the shelf for five more. (Tyler Nickel, a 6-foot-7 forward, is also one of the SEC’s top 3-point shooters.)
Miles — a 6-2 guard and, by most measures, Vandy’s second-most effective player behind Tanner — returned over the weekend and had stellar individual showings in a 69-65 loss to Tennessee and the win over Georgia on Wednesday.
That perimeter corps will be a handful for the Wildcats, but there was more talk Thursday about the physicality Vanderbilt can bring to the court. And the fact that Kentucky simply didn’t match that in the first go around.
“We’re talking about it, working on it every day,” Pope said of matching it this time. “I think we’ve grown a lot in that area. I think they have, too. I think it’s our league. … And it’s (all of) elite-level college basketball right now — it’s just really, really physical. So it’s every single night.”
Pope emphasized that the Wildcats are “making strides” in that department, and he could point to their most recent result — the 72-63 win at South Carolina on Tuesday — as an example.
In that game, UK outrebounded the Gamecocks 48-28 and won second-chance points 14-4, a 10-point margin in a nine-point victory that both coaches pointed to afterward as a key to the outcome.
That victory — albeit against the SEC’s lowest-rated team — featured role players like Mouhamed Dioubate, Brandon Garrison and Trent Noah coming up with 50/50 balls and other hustle plays in key moments. The Cats will need as much of that as they can get Saturday.
But they’ll need more to beat the Commodores, and this will present a unique matchup at this stage of the season.
The Jan. 27 meeting marked just the second game — and first on the road — after the injury to starting wing Kam Williams, who joined fellow starters Jaland Lowe and Jayden Quaintance on the UK sidelines. All three players remain out — it’s sounding more likely than not that all three will be out for the remainder of the season — and that’s left Pope with a nine-player rotation that plays shorter than that number would indicate.
That arrangement was still new a month ago in Nashville. It’s been accepted now, even if it’s still a struggle.
With Otega Oweh and Denzel Aberdeen logging close to 40 minutes per game in recent weeks — and Collin Chandler coming close on a few occasions — Pope has talked plenty about “fatigue” and “slippage” amid the team’s most recent woes.
Malachi Moreno has remained steady in the middle. Andrija Jelavic has enjoyed some high points — especially in that South Carolina game — and Dioubate’s grit has helped the Cats at times. But there’s been plenty of inconsistency across the roster.
One positive for Pope’s team is the margin of that first Vanderbilt game has been a recent anomaly. The Cats were also beaten double digits by Gonzaga (35 points), Michigan State (17 points) and Alabama (15 points) earlier this seeason — they probably deserved a similar fate in a 96-88 loss to Louisville, too — but the Vandy game is their only such defeat since the SEC opener nearly two months ago.
Even during that three-game losing streak, Kentucky played competitively. The Cats will need to keep that up — and find some more elsewhere — to win Saturday.
And they’ll be doing it against not only a team that clearly thinks it can push them around — and has — but one that’s known to favor a high-tempo style under second-year coach Mark Byington.
With Texas A&M and Florida up next — two other teams that rank highly in the SEC in pace of play — Pope knows this closing stretch to the regular season will be a balancing act. On one hand, he clearly feels like he has a team that could use a little more rest. On the other hand, he’d like his group to run, too.
So, what’s a coach to do? The first test will come Saturday.
“Our best basketball is in transition. We’re one of the elite transition offensive teams in the country. It’s where we shine,” Pope said. “And in the halfcourt, the way we’re built is the way that we love to play this game, is with a ton of energy. And so us moderating that — where sometimes we just change the dynamic of the game once we get to halfcourt — is something we’ve been working on. But that’s also the way we play. …
“We’ve had real positive results when we extend the court and either press three-quarter court or press full court. But you’re also fighting this deal of managing the limited roster and the energy of it, and so that’s all been a work in progress. We’re just nothing like what we imagined we’d be, but we’re finding a space where we can be really good. And I think we can be great here down the stretch.”
This story was originally published February 27, 2026 at 6:30 AM.
