Kentucky was headed for another ugly loss. Here’s how the Cats avoided disaster
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kentucky overcame a late Missouri surge to win 78-72 and advance.
- Missouri’s Mark Mitchell scored 32, sparking a comeback from down 16.
- Kentucky steadied late with key free throws, stops and Aberdeen’s clutch layup.
Plenty went right for Kentucky in the first 25 minutes Thursday against Missouri.
It’s those last 15 that were the talk of the postgame locker room.
The Cats came away with a 78-72 victory over the Tigers in the end, so that scene was a celebratory one. UK won its second game in two days in the SEC Tournament in Nashville, advancing to Friday’s quarterfinals, where the opponent will be a top-seeded Florida team that is riding an 11-game winning streak and has defeated the Cats twice during that stretch.
For much of Thursday, it looked like Mark Pope’s team would be rolling into that rematch with the Gators riding a massive wave of momentum.
And then it looked like the Cats wouldn’t make it that far at all.
What happened to get Kentucky to the edge of the breaking point had already been seen time and again by those who have followed this team all season. What happened at the very end? That hadn’t been quite as common. And that was cause for celebration.
What these Cats did Thursday … could they have done it a couple of months ago?
“I mean, no. Because we lost,” UK guard Denzel Aberdeen said of his team’s first meeting with Missouri back in January, letting out a laugh that was equal parts relief, pride and self-deprecation. “But today we won.”
That they did.
As the midway point of the second half was approaching, that result seemed like a formality.
Kentucky smothered Missouri with its defense in the first half, going up by as many as a dozen points and taking a 38-29 lead into the halftime locker room.
Collin Chandler hit a 3-pointer on UK’s first possession of the second half to make it a 41-29 game. And the Cats kept coming. A couple of minutes later, that lead was 14 points. A couple of minutes after that, Kentucky was up 16.
UK had a double-digit lead with under 12 minutes to play. It was down to seven with 10 minutes left. And then Missouri’s Mark Mitchell went off.
Mitchell scored 14 points over a stretch of about seven minutes. Before his first bucket to ignite that flurry, Kentucky had a 60-53 lead. The shot to end it — a tough fadeaway jumper over the extended arm of Brandon Garrison — put Missouri ahead 70-69 with 2:34 to play.
That one increased Mitchell’s tally to 32 points for the afternoon and 23 in the second half alone.
What got into Missouri’s leading scorer?
“I have no idea,” Aberdeen said. “But he went crazy.”
How did the Cats let it happen?
“They were just really aggressive,” said Oweh, who led Kentucky with 21 points. “You know, season on the line, win or go home. We knew they were gonna throw a punch. It was a real hard punch, for sure, but I feel like we did a good job of staying composed. And we have to do better at — when we’re up that big — keeping our foot on their neck.”
Missouri had a lot to play for, it’s true. The Tigers were projected on the right side of the bubble coming into this game, but without much margin for error. And with other bubble teams still playing and bid thieves lurking in other leagues, Mizzou needed a win Thursday to earn a little breathing room.
Kentucky was safely in the March Madness field no matter what happened in this game, but these Cats — widely projected as a 7 seed Thursday morning — aren’t content with simply getting into the NCAA Tournament.
They want to make some noise on college basketball’s biggest stage. Before that, they wanted to improve their seed ahead of Selection Sunday. And they wanted another shot at that red-hot Florida team that’s already beaten them twice in the past four weeks.
But just like that, what appeared to be an easy victory was trending toward a terrible defeat.
And these particular Cats know all about that.
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It’s been a season filled with head-scratchers for Pope’s team, and the one that’s still perhaps the toughest to fathom had taken place two months earlier, with Missouri on the other side.
Kentucky led these same Tigers by eight points with under five minutes to go in the friendly confines of Rupp Arena back on Jan. 7. The Cats lost that one 73-68 following a meltdown in the final minutes. On Thursday, it nearly happened again.
But it didn’t. This time, when the Tigers threw that last big haymaker, it wasn’t enough to KO the Cats.
“I think we do a great job at staying together, staying composed,” Chandler said. “I think we did a good job at showing that today — when the momentum was on their side, being able to reverse it.”
There were enough big plays to go around in the first 37 minutes and change, even as Mitchell was going off and Missouri was storming back to take the lead. Those were celebrated afterward. But those last two and a half minutes were the difference in the end.
Missouri held its 70-69 lead for only 28 seconds. On Kentucky’s next possession after Mitchell’s go-ahead shot, the Cats stayed composed. There were slight openings, but no glaring ones. They didn’t force the issue, and it ended with Aberdeen drawing a foul and earning a trip to the line.
He made both free throws with 2:06 on the clock. Kentucky 71, Missouri 70.
On the Tigers’ next trip down the floor, they went exactly where everyone in Bridgestone Arena knew they were going to go. The ball found its way to Mitchell on the wing. He tested Garrison again, but the UK big man didn’t budge, forcing Mitchell to kick it over to T.O. Barrett, who was left with little choice but to force a bad shot over Oweh as the shot clock expired.
That one didn’t go, and Kentucky center Malachi Moreno — Pope was playing two bigs to try and neutralize Missouri’s length at this point — corralled the rebound.
On Kentucky’s next possession, Oweh drove the right side and hit a layup to make it 73-70.
And then Missouri went back to Mitchell again. He thought about a 3-pointer that could have tied the game — he’d banked one in earlier in the half — and decided instead to go at Garrison again. Garrison stayed in front of him. Again. This time, as soon as Mitchell committed to taking Garrison down low, Oweh swooped in, swiped at the ball and knocked it off Mitchell and out of bounds. Kentucky ball with 52.5 seconds left.
But it was still a one-possession game, and there was still plenty of time on the clock.
With the Nashville crowd chanting “Go Big Blue!” Aberdeen calmly brought the ball up the court and tossed it to Oweh, who couldn’t find a driving lane and threw it to Chandler, who swung it back to Aberdeen on the wing.
Aberdeen passed it back to Chandler, who passed it back to Oweh — the shot clock approaching five seconds — and UK’s star player found a streaking Moreno in the middle. The Kentucky big man caught the ball and kicked it back to Aberdeen on the wing.
With just three seconds left on that shot clock, Aberdeen pump-faked Mitchell off the court, drove around him and hit a tough layup at the rim, falling to the floor as the buzzer sounded and the ball went through the net. There was no foul call, but it wasn’t necessary. Kentucky was up 75-70 with 22.5 seconds left. Missouri never got it back within one possession again.
Disaster averted. What would have happened under this same scenario two months ago?
“I think we probably would have folded,” Oweh said. “Because we’ve been in that position before, where we’ve been up at the last media (timeout), and then we’ve just had some blunders. That’s the whole thing about the season, though. It’s long. So you just keep on getting better and knowing what you got to work on. And I think we got better in that area.”
It wasn’t a perfect performance, by any means. The Cats could have done a better job on Mitchell in the second half. They could have figured out a way to extend that 16-point lead even more. There were possessions they’d like to have back, ones that would’ve haunted them on the trip back to Lexington if this result had gone the other way.
“We have to do a better job at holding leads,” said UK forward Mouhamed Dioubate. “And once we get to 16, we can’t get comfortable. We have to go up 20. That has to be the mindset every game moving forward.
“I think we did a good job defensively today. We were stacking stops in the first half. We were really dominating on defense. We just have to do it all 40 minutes tomorrow.”
Dioubate was one of those guys who made some huge plays throughout this game, as Oweh and others were quick to point out after it was finished. And Dioubate’s point — the need to put together a complete performance, especially with top-seeded Florida coming up at 1 p.m. ET Friday — was echoed across the locker room.
“I think this is just another learning experience for us,” Moreno said. “And this will be an opportunity for tomorrow — if we’re able to get that lead — just to keep pushing and just to put them away for good.”
Tomorrow almost didn’t come for the Cats, but they did enough to ensure that it would.
This team is far from perfect, but all of those imperfections along the way — as frustrating as it was for the players to play through and the fans to watch — have amounted to something.
“It’s just been a season full of experiences, because we faced a lot of adversity,” Chandler said. “I think, in my opinion, that adversity is coming to help us right now. We’re going to continue to use that this time of the year. I think we’ve done a great job at just — in a lot of games — finding ways to win. I think we did that again today. That’s the biggest thing for this time of year, is finding ways to win.”
This story was originally published March 12, 2026 at 6:19 PM.
