‘He doesn’t want to go home’: How Otega Oweh helped keep Kentucky’s season alive
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Otega Oweh banked a buzzer-tying 3 to force OT in an 89-84 win.
- Oweh finished with a career-high 35 points, eight rebounds and seven assists.
- Kentucky rallied past Santa Clara and advances to face Iowa State.
The game was over, and the scene inside and out of the Kentucky locker room was a celebratory one.
In the hallway outside that door, UK athletics officials mingled with members of Mark Pope’s family, their expressions a mix of joy and relief and all of those other emotions that collide when things go well in college basketball this time of year.
Through that open door walked Mouhamed Dioubate. And Brandon Garrison. And Pope himself. They made their way through a series of hallways toward the Enterprise Center media room, ready to take questions about the latest occurrence of March Madness that had just transpired.
Someone was missing. Where was Otega Oweh? Surely he was coming, too.
A couple of minutes passed, and Oweh finally emerged from the locker room, headed to the same place but too far behind his coach and teammates to know where to go. As a look of confusion came over Oweh’s face, a UK official caught up to him and pointed the way.
“You’re going to have to walk in front of me,” he said, still unclear on where to go.
A few minutes earlier, he knew exactly where he had to go. At that moment, he knew exactly what he had to do. And if he didn’t, Kentucky’s season — and his own college career — would be finished.
“We all know who we want taking the last shot,” UK guard Kam Williams said inside that locker room. “He’s definitely our best player. And when it comes to this type of environment, if the best player doesn’t shoot the ball, it’s kind of like, ‘What if he had the ball?’ But when your best player shoots it, you just gotta live with it. We lived with it. And he made it.”
He sure did.
Kentucky survived a scare from 10-seeded Santa Clara on Friday afternoon, finishing off the Broncos in overtime for an 89-84 victory to advance to the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
The Cats will play 2-seeded Iowa State on Sunday for a berth in the Sweet 16. If not for Oweh, they’d be watching the rest of this tournament from home.
And nobody wanted that.
Kentucky needed to persevere in the final five minutes of OT to earn this win, but the play that everybody was talking about afterward happened just before that extra period.
The final 10 seconds of regulation was a roller-coaster ride befitting this Kentucky basketball season, a campaign that has been filled with false starts and ugly finishes, off-the-court angst and on-the-court disappointment.
After 39 minutes and 50 seconds of a game that remained close throughout, Oweh drove toward the basket, spun near the block and hit a layup to tie it at 70 with 9.9 seconds left.
The Broncos brought the ball up the court and got it into the hands of Allen Graves, who buried a 3-pointer for a 73-70 lead with 2.4 seconds remaining. Santa Clara had three timeouts left — and coach Herb Sendek frantically ran down the sideline trying to call one — but Denzel Aberdeen got the ball in too quickly, before the nearest official noticed Sendek’s signal, and that’s when the real madness hit.
Oweh collected the entry pass from Aberdeen and took off in a mad dash down the court. He said later that he was just trying to get as close to the basket as he could, knowing he’d have to stop before he came upon the 3-point line but also knowing he wouldn’t have enough time to get there anyway.
“I was looking at the clock the whole time,” Oweh said. “Obviously they hit a 3, so we had to hit a 3. So I was really just trying to get a shot off and just not wanting the season to end, just locking in, trying to make the shot.”
Aberdeen jogged behind him. Dioubate and Collin Chandler ran alongside to his right. Malachi Moreno was already all the way down the court near the basket, but Kentucky needed a 3. And every Wildcat other than Oweh was a spectator at this point.
“They were the longest two seconds of all time,” Chandler said. “He kept taking dribbles, and I was like, ‘Bro, you gotta put it up.’ … But he got it up. And I don’t even know how to describe it. It was unreal.”
Oweh came to an abrupt stop about 40 feet from the basket and rose up right in front of Pope, who was out of timeouts and watched helplessly like everyone else, hands on his hips and eyes on his star player.
There was about a half-second on the clock when the ball left Oweh’s hands. He came down awkwardly, landing on the court almost in a crouch, but no one was looking at him by this point.
Pope, Oweh and everyone else in the arena followed the ball as it made its way through the air.
“I was just praying for it to go in. I was about to cry if he missed that shot,” Dioubate said. “I didn’t want the season to end already. We love being around each other every day. So I was just thinking, ‘This can’t be the moment where it ends.’”
Brandon Garrison, the co-star for the Cats on this day, is in his second season playing alongside Oweh. They both came as transfers to play for Pope’s first team. They’re friends away from the basketball court. Garrison has watched Oweh hit big shots, even game-winners, in the past.
“It’s Otega,” he said of this one. “… I just knew it was going in.”
Their coach wasn’t so sure.
“I was nervous with the trajectory,” Pope said. “But then when it hit the glass in exactly the right spot, I’m like, ‘Oh, this is beautiful.’ It’s awesome.”
The buzzer sounded, the ball banked in, and all heck broke loose.
Pope raised his arms in the air in celebration. Oweh, cool as can be, turned toward his coach and then the UK fans sitting near the floor, a look of confidence etched all over his face. The Kentucky bench erupted, with teammates swarming their star player, a mob that made its way all the way down the court near the Santa Clara sideline before it dispersed.
Just the way Oweh drew it up?
“No. I didn’t call ‘bank.’ I just got it up out of my hands,” he acknowledged. “It’s March. I feel like that’s just what happens. It’s crazy. I just tried to get the shot up. Obviously tried to make it, but it found its way to the backboard. I’m just glad it went in.”
There was a moment of catharsis back on that UK sideline.
The Cats celebrated as if they’d won the game. But there were still five minutes left to play. The reaction was understandable given the circumstances, not just of the shot but of this season.
It hasn’t gone the way anyone involved with Kentucky basketball thought it would. When times got tough — and that happened early — the narratives as to why started flying. Along the way, there was one, in particular, that irked Oweh. It was the one that said these UK players didn’t like each other, didn’t like playing together and likely were headed nowhere because of it.
Oweh, as even-keeled as they come, always pushed back hard on that one. And as he dribbled up that court, eyes on the clock, he saw his senior season ticking away in real time.
“It just goes to show that he doesn’t want to go home,” Moreno said. “It’s win or go home every game, and he’s not ready to go. And neither is any one of us. And the way he played today just shows the leadership and just shows the no-quit and the drive he has for this game.”
There’s that confidence, too. It’s a confidence that results in stubbornness at times, as his head coach for these past two years knows better than anyone else.
“I’ve been really blessed to have a chance to coach him,” Pope said. “There are moments where if I had longer hair, I might pull it out a little bit. We know that. We’ve spent a lot of time together. But this guy just shows up every single game in only a unique Otega Oweh way.”
He did it again Friday afternoon. His first half wasn’t the best. Kentucky went into the break down 31-29, and Oweh had been merely fine. He was nearly unstoppable after that. He scored 22 points, grabbed five rebounds and dished out three assists in the second half. He hit 3-pointers, sliced his way to the basket, fought for 50/50 balls and competed on defense.
Oweh got plenty of help down the stretch. Garrison was a marvel. Dioubate made big plays. Others contributed in key spots. But Oweh seemed to always be right in the thick of it.
In what could have been his final college basketball game — and it sure looked like it was going to be — Oweh finished with a career-high 35 points, eight rebounds and seven assists.
And he delivered the best line of the day before his game-saving shot went through the net.
It came from that place of confidence that Pope has seen up close for the past two seasons.
“Otega raced down the floor and stopped right in front of me, and as he raised up, he said ‘That’s a bucket.’ And then he threw it in off the glass,” Pope said.
It sounds too good to be true. But Moreno was standing within earshot, too. He knows what he heard. And he’ll never forget what he saw.
“The ball kind of moved in slow motion, but it was going on the right path,” Moreno said. “And he turned and he looked and he said, ‘That’s a bucket.’ Just having those moments, it’s just one of those things that will be remembered in March forever.”
That’s a bucket. Moreno grinned.
“I mean, he does it all the time,” he said. “That’s always the confidence he has. And that’s just what he does. He’s Otega Oweh.”
And his season isn’t over yet.
“I feel like that’s kind of what happened in those last couple of possessions. We just really enjoy playing with each other, and we didn’t want the season to end yet,” Oweh said. “The game is going to give us a lot of ups and downs and stuff that we can’t really control, but we just gotta respond. And we just found a way to respond. So we’re not done playing yet.”
This story was originally published March 20, 2026 at 5:55 PM.
