‘Only as strong as our pack.’ Here’s a key to a Kentucky basketball run in March
There were clear standouts in Kentucky’s 91-77 victory over Vanderbilt on Saturday.
Collin Chandler could hardly miss from 3-point range, going 6 for 8 from deep — with five of those 3s coming in the Cats’ dominant first half — and finishing with a career-high 23 points.
Otega Oweh tallied four assists and two steals in that first half before scoring 17 of his 23 points in the second, slicing and dicing the Vandy defense with a series of drives to the hoop.
Denzel Aberdeen, who added 15 points, had four assists in the first half, too. More impressively, he played a team-high 37 minutes and eight seconds without committing a single turnover.
The “three-headed GOAT,” Oweh called that trio after the game. And if Cats are going to make a run in the fast-approaching postseason, they’re going to need those guards to carry them.
But they’re also going to need more from other spots on the roster, and everybody knows it.
On Saturday afternoon in Rupp Arena, they got that, too.
“It’s huge,” Oweh said. “I feel like when we have a lot of bench points — or not even points, just, you know, good production — we’re a really hard team to beat, because we just keep on coming. I can come out and take a break, Collin can come out and take a break, and we just keep on going. So I feel like that’s kind of what happened today.”
Kentucky’s star player was quick to point out that Kentucky did just fine while he was on the bench. Oweh wasn’t over there long, playing 34 minutes and 29 seconds against the Commodores, but the Cats outscored Vandy in each of the three short stints he spent on UK’s sideline.
“Bench production is huge, and it was really good today,” he said.
That bench is a lot smaller these days. Jaland Lowe, Jayden Quaintance and Kam Williams — three starter-level players — are over there on gamedays, but they’re unavailable due to injury.
That leaves Mouhamed Dioubate, Brandon Garrison, Jasper Johnson and Trent Noah as Mark Pope’s only reserve options. That means everyone is likely to get a chance from here on out.
Pope was pleased with the production Saturday.
“I thought Jasper was really good. I liked Jasper a lot tonight,” he said. “Jasper comes at us with zero turnovers against a backcourt that’s one of the best turnover-creating backcourts in our league. So I thought Jasper was great off the bench. Trent gave us some really quality minutes off the bench. I thought (Andrija Jelavic) was great starting the game, and BG helped us off the bench. BG has given us something on the glass and defensively.
“And so our bench matters, and I thought those guys were good.”
Pope has talked about potential fatigue issues around his team since Williams suffered a broken foot on Jan. 21, joining Lowe and Quaintance on the sidelines and leaving UK with just nine available players. The result has been a lot more PT for that “three-headed GOAT.”
Going into UK’s game at Texas A&M on Tuesday night, those three guards had played substantially more in the 10 games since Williams was injured than they had while he was available.
In those 10 games, Oweh averaged 34.7 minutes (up 5.4 per game from before the Williams injury), Aberdeen averaged 33.3 (an increase of 6.1 per game) and Chandler was up to 30.6 (an increase of 8.2 per game).
It’ll be difficult for Pope to take any of them out of the game for too long this postseason, but he’ll have to at some points. And that means others will need to fill in against some top competition.
The Kentucky basketball bench
As the only guard off the bench, Johnson will be a key piece to UK’s reserve corps.
Coming off of perhaps his worst game as a Wildcat — three turnovers and two fouls in eight minutes at South Carolina — Johnson was much steadier Saturday in Rupp Arena.
He corralled an offensive rebound and immediately assisted Aberdeen on a 3-pointer off that play, kicking the ball out for an open shot instead of trying to force something himself at the rim. A minute later, he hit a 3-pointer of his own. He played 12 minutes in all, and he committed zero turnovers for the first time in three weeks.
Like Pope had at the podium, Chandler led his appreciation of the bench with Johnson, a freshman who has drawn some fan ire this season for his inconsistent decision-making.
“No matter what anybody says, when Jasper’s in the game, we trust him to handle the ball,” Chandler said. “And we trust Trent to hit shots. We trust Mo, obviously, to get rebounds and be Mo, what he does. And BG obviously does what he does. I thought BG was great today, as well.
“I just think there’s a big trust with them, no matter what happens. And I think they’ve been great. … We’re left to nine guys now, and we’re figuring it out. We’re learning to play how it is.”
Johnson playing clean minutes will allow those other guards to get a little extra breather. Noah has struggled lately from 3-point range — 0 for 7 in the month of February — but his coaches and teammates will still be encouraging him to take the open shots, and Pope has lauded his ability to fight for 50/50 balls.
Garrison is capable of bringing an energy and physicality off the bench that can lead to good things for the Cats. Pope left Dioubate out of his own rundown of UK’s bench Saturday, but he praised the junior forward elsewhere in his postgame comments and talks about him more like a sixth starter, subbing for Jelavic at the 4 spot, depending on the matchup and situation.
Dioubate had eight points, four rebounds and two steals against Vandy, playing 15 minutes in the second half, four days after leading UK in plus/minus in the win at South Carolina. Pope has stressed all season that he wants Kentucky to play with physicality and toughness at all times, and no one on the roster embodies that more than Dioubate in the middle.
They’re all going to be needed in March.
After Texas A&M on Tuesday, it’s Florida, the class of the conference, in the regular-season finale in Lexington on Saturday afternoon. Then the SEC Tournament next week. And the NCAA Tournament the week after that.
Teams that make runs come tournament time tend to get big plays from unexpected places.
Kentucky fans need only look back to last March for a prime example. When its first-round matchup with 14-seeded Troy was closer than expected, it was Chandler, Garrison and Noah — three guys off the bench — who came up with big plays to send the Cats on their way to victory.
A couple of days later, Chandler nailed two huge 3-pointers and added three steals in a win over Illinois, helping spark Kentucky to its first Sweet Sixteen trip in six years.
If UK is to make it that far in 2026, it’ll almost certainly need one or two (or more) of those reserves to deliver in the clutch.
“We’re only as strong as our pack,” starting center Malachi Moreno said after Saturday’s game. “It takes everybody to get this win, and everybody stepped up today. And as we get further down the stretch — and as we lead into March — everybody’s going to step up more, and everybody’s going to have a big role and a big play in our development and our success.”
