‘Step on their necks’: Why Vandy win might have been Kentucky’s best this season
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kentucky avenged earlier loss by matching physicality and pushing in transition
- Team shot 58.8% and posted the season's highest adjusted offensive efficiency
- Win bolsters NCAA resume and signals readiness entering March tournament
As good as it looked from tip to buzzer, the 91-77 victory over Vanderbilt on Saturday probably wasn’t Kentucky’s most impressive result of this college basketball season.
There are a few viable candidates for that honor.
The win over St. John’s on a neutral court back on Dec. 20 was special, the Cats having their full complement of players — with since-sidelined Jayden Quaintance and Jaland Lowe leading the way — for the first time all season, showing a national television audience what they could do as a unit.
Mark Pope’s team has already beaten SEC rival Tennessee twice this season, including a major upset in Knoxville that necessitated a good amount of grit and came right in the middle of a five-game UK winning streak.
For reasons both personal and practical, the Cats’ upset at Arkansas — beating not only John Calipari but also a Razorbacks team that ranks among the best in the conference — served as a moment of catharsis for the UK fans back home while also looking mighty impressive on a Selection Sunday résumé.
But there have been plenty of lowlights in the aftermath of those wins.
And Kentucky’s most recent skid occurred at a most inopportune time.
After beating Tennessee in Rupp Arena on Feb. 7, the Cats dropped three games in a row. They lost at Florida. No shame in that. But then they let one get away against Georgia in Rupp, an inexcusable outcome under the circumstances.
Four days later, a controversial loss to an Auburn team on a five-game losing skid, a defeat that led to Pope getting fined $25,000 by the conference for directing his ire at the referees while Kentucky fans everywhere stewed about the state of the program amid a season that seemed, once again, on the brink of collapse.
UK snapped that skid next time out, but a 72-63 win over a South Carolina squad that ranked as the SEC’s worst wasn’t going to change anybody’s mind about anything.
The rematch with Vanderbilt on Saturday brought that opportunity. And the Cats not only delivered, they turned in a performance that should make their many doubters think twice about writing them off.
A month and a day after Vandy ran Kentucky out of Memorial Gym — going up 20 at halftime and not letting the Cats get anywhere close in the second half en route to an 80-55 victory — Pope’s team returned the favor.
This time, UK was the aggressor.
A flurry of 3-pointers in the early going from Collin Chandler — and plenty of contributions from elsewhere on the court — sent the Cats into the first TV timeout of the afternoon with a 21-14 lead. They scored 23 points in the entire first half against Vanderbilt in Nashville.
“Just making plays for teammates. I think that’s how we started,” said UK star Otega Oweh. “We got some stops, pushed it in transition and instead of just pounding into the paint, we had guys running corners, filling behind. We got Collin on a couple transition 3s early.
“I feel like when we just be aggressive and make plays for teammates, that’s how we can really get rolling in the first couple minutes.”
The Cats never stopped rolling.
That lead ballooned to 20 points with five minutes still left in the first half, and the Commodores never had much of a chance to get back in the game after that opening punch. Because UK didn’t let them.
Before the first game, Vandy coach Mark Byington told his players that they were capable of pushing the Cats around. And that’s exactly what they did, imposing their physicality from the opening tip and leaving Pope’s team on its heels all night long.
After that first game, the Vandy players bragged about the game plan. That didn’t sit well.
“It definitely was personal,” Oweh said. “... This time around, we just wanted to make sure we were really the more physical team. We just got to be the first team to hit. I feel like when we do that, it sets the tone for the whole game.”
Vanderbilt was no less physical in game two. Kentucky just returned the favor this time.
The Cats outrebounded the Dores 29-22. They won the battle of second-chance points 10-6. They attacked the rim and outscored Vandy by 10 at the free-throw line as a result. Each of Byington’s starting bigs — AK Okereke and Devin McGlockton — fouled out of the game.
It wasn’t easy. On one play, McGlockton was called for a technical after flailing his arm into Brandon Garrison’s head, leaving the UK big man in a heap on the court, ultimately sending him back to the locker room for further assessment. Garrison returned later in the second half.
Malachi Moreno showed up to postgame interviews with a nasty cut under his right eye. He couldn’t say when it happened, only that it occurred at some point during the game. A trainer told him about it. His response? “Oh well, it’s not the first time.”
The first 20 minutes was as impressive a half as Kentucky has played all season.
Chandler was lights out. He missed his first 3-point attempt of the day and then rattled off four in a row. He finished with a career-high 23 points and went 6 for 8 from deep. (A controversial foul call that went against him — a theme for Chandler recently — wiped out a seventh made 3.)
But as impressive as that first half turned out to be, the second was perhaps more important.
Try as they might to get back into it, the 25th-ranked Commodores hit a wall at every attempt. Trailing by 15 at halftime — and down 13 after Tyler Nickel scored a bucket just 10 seconds into the second half — Vandy never got back within single digits.
“We came to the locker room at halftime, and we just said that we got to start to expand the lead,” Moreno said. “And kind of just step on their necks and crush their game.”
Kentucky led by as many as 22 points in that second half. Vandy outscored the Cats 10-2 over the last four minutes to make the final score a little more respectable than the reality. And that final flurry technically meant the Dores “won” the second half by a score of 46-45.
Pope was just fine with that. In fact, he was quick to celebrate it.
“I was proud of the 46-45 second half,” he said. “I was really proud of that. And, you know, that’s with us playing far from perfect, but making enough plays. I was really proud of the guys for staying really aggressive. As Vanderbilt tried to extend the press, our guys just attacked it. It’s what we do when we’re at our best. There’s not second guessing. Guys were super aggressive against the press, and we ended up with four or five layups — a couple of and-ones — just with our guys making great, aggressive decisions. And that’s how you want your guys to feel. You don’t want them to feel like they’re on their heels, and they did a nice job of that.”
The last time his Cats were in Rupp — that 86-78 loss to Georgia — Pope lamented that his guards weren’t aggressive enough against the Bulldogs’ press, and they paid the price for it.
This time, they didn’t back down. Oweh scored 17 of his 23 points in the second half, many of those coming in transition as Vandy tried and failed to stop the ball in the backcourt. Instead of pulling back and protecting the lead, Oweh stayed on the gas, scoring at the rim more often than not.
Denzel Aberdeen scored 15 points to go with four assists and — more impressive — zero turnovers in a team-high 37 minutes on the court. Aberdeen has played 144 minutes over Kentucky’s past four games. He’s committed just one turnover in that time.
“He’s been incredible,” Pope said.
According to the metrics, this was Kentucky’s best offensive showing of the season. The Cats shot 58.8% from the floor, going 11 for 22 on 3-pointers and making 20 of 25 free throws. In that dominant first half, they had 12 assists to just three turnovers.
It all added up to the highest adjusted offensive efficiency rating of the season. In fact, only last season’s 106-100 win over Florida — the eventual national champions — has ranked higher in the Pope era.
But that excellence on the offensive end was just one reason for Pope to smile after this one. Playing a team that had beaten his by 25 points one month earlier, the Cats threw the first punch. And, most important of all, they didn’t stop fighting, staying aggressive throughout the afternoon and putting another bold line on their NCAA Tournament résumé.
“It’s very important, because we’re trying to get our seed for the tournament,” Moreno said. “And we’re trying to make some noise and let people know that we’re here to play, and we’re not going away.”
Before Saturday, plenty assumed that this team’s window had already passed. Fans parsed through bracketology projections, looked at those potential second-round matchups and didn’t see much reason to believe their Cats would be playing by week two of March Madness.
Those three losses were deflating. The win at South Carolina was ugly. This was something else.
If the Cats can play like this, they can play with anybody. And showing such an effort on the final day before the calendar flips to March is reason enough to believe that, perhaps, their story is not quite finished.
“I mean, every time we were together, every time we were talking, ‘Let’s just keep going.’ It’s playing to win, not playing not to lose, right?” Chandler said. “That was our mentality: ‘We got off. We gotta keep going. We gotta keep putting the pressure on them.’
“Because that’s when we’re great. And that’s when we’re playing our best. And I thought we did a really good job of that tonight.”
This story was originally published February 28, 2026 at 7:50 PM.
