A ‘catastrophe’ for the Cats. And a fitting end to this UK basketball season
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kentucky entered 2025–26 with high expectations but battled injuries and roster gaps.
- Turnovers and second-half collapse handed Iowa State an 82–63 win and season end.
- Coach Pope praised effort; seniors Aberdeen and Oweh reflected on growth and gratitude.
For a few fleeting moments at the very beginning of Sunday’s game, this Kentucky basketball team seemed primed to pull off something special.
How fitting that turned out to be.
It was true of their final afternoon together as teammates. It was true of their season as a whole.
And it all started so splendidly back in October.
When Mark Pope put his second roster of UK basketball players together last offseason, the ceiling appeared to be unlimited. In fact, the rafters of Rupp Arena were often referenced by the Kentucky coach in those days, constant mentions of the number nine, a nod to the elusive ninth national championship banner that Pope came back to Lexington to raise on his watch.
A lofty goal for a program that knows nothing else and rarely accepts anything less.
The plan went awry before the first real game was played, as everyone who followed this team for its journey through the 2025-26 season knows all too well. The Cats battled adversity on and off the court. They endured blowout losses. They kept fighting in the face of crippling injuries.
And they took to the Enterprise Center court Sunday with their season still intact, their dream still attainable. It would take a miracle, the doubters reminded them, but they’d already found one of those 48 hours earlier on that same court.
And when it comes to March, in this sport at least, there’s no such thing as the impossible.
So the Cats took the floor against an Iowa State team that was missing its best player but still considered to be the clear favorite. And, for those few fleeting moments, it looked like Pope’s team might run the Cyclones right off the court.
On UK’s first possession, Malachi Moreno found Otega Oweh on a backdoor cut for a two-handed slam. A couple minutes later, Moreno found Collin Chandler in the corner, and the sophomore guard nailed a 3-pointer.
On the other end of the court, Pope pumped his fist and walked down the sideline with a smile on his face. “We’re movin’ the ball! We’re movin’ the ball!” he yelled with delight.
On the next possession, Andrija Jelavic found Denzel Aberdeen on a backdoor cut, which the UK senior finished off with a reverse layup.
A little while after that, Chandler found himself open again. He had gone 1 for 9 from deep in an overtime win over Santa Clara in the first round of the NCAA Tournament two days earlier. He had been 6 for 28 from long range for the month of March before this game began.
Chandler let another one fly. It hit the rim four times and the backboard once, dancing around the cylinder until it finally dropped through to give the Cats a 10-2 lead.
Was this really happening?
Four minutes later, Mouhamed Dioubate threw down a dunk. Kentucky 20, Iowa State 9.
In a season filled with terrible starts for the Cats, this one was going spectacularly.
And then, fittingly, it all started to fall apart.
Iowa State rallied to tie the score at 20. But Kentucky answered to take a 30-23 lead.
That was the score with 90 seconds left in the first half. A UK team that had trailed so many times at the break — forced to fight back or lose — would be leading the 2-seeded Cyclones at halftime of this one.
The Cats got a stop. And then, like so many times this season, they couldn’t corral the rebound. Dioubate and Moreno took turns trying to grab the ball, which was tipped all over creation until it ended up in the hands of Iowa State’s Milan Momcilovic, the best 3-point shooter in the country.
Momcilovic didn’t hesitate. He got set and swished it. If the Cats had been able to secure that board, who knows what would’ve happened? What did happen was an 8-0 Cyclones run over the final 89 seconds of the half, capped by a 3-pointer from Nate Heise right before the buzzer to give Iowa State a 31-30 advantage at the break.
It was their first lead since the score was 2-0.
“They had a little bit of momentum, but knowing that we were only down one, we knew that it was a game for anybody,” Chandler said. “And we were hoping to continue to play good basketball.”
The Cats never led again. They kept things close in the opening minutes of the second half, but the game got away from them in time. The final score of this UK season: Iowa State 82, Kentucky 63.
“The turnovers in the second half just killed us,” said Jelavic.
UK committed 12 of those in the first half, but Iowa State struggled to make shots — 29.0% from the floor in the period, 11 misses from 3-point range to start the game — and the Cats played solid defense. Kentucky finished the game with 20 turnovers. The Cyclones shot 63.3% from the floor in the second half and went 6 for 12 from deep.
Everything that had frustrated Pope and the UK fans and the players themselves all season popped up at exactly the wrong time. In a matter of minutes, the Cats were cooked.
“We were not getting rid of the ball easily. We were not passing to each other. We didn’t play defense,” Jelavic said. “They just were scoring on us however they wanted.”
Iowa State’s defensive pressure sped up the Cats and led to easy points on the other end.
“They gained some confidence. We got a little bit discouraged,” Jelavic said. “And it was a total catastrophe in the second half.”
It was still a single-digit deficit with 13 minutes left. Not long after that, the Cats were down 20.
Kentucky’s players kept playing, but the outcome wasn’t in doubt any longer.
And so the final few minutes of this UK basketball season were spent waiting on the inevitable.
That was also fitting.
There were high points along the way. Those wins over St. John’s and Arkansas and Tennessee (twice) — three teams that will still be dancing when the NCAA Tournament resumes later this week — delighted Kentucky fans at the time.
Oweh gave them all something to remember with his 40-foot bank shot to beat the buzzer and spark the Cats to an overtime win over Santa Clara two days earlier.
But there was an overwhelming sense of what could’ve been with this team. And that hit well before Kentucky suffered its 14th and final loss of the season Sunday afternoon.
“I think we were disappointed that we never got to run with the roster that we thought we had,” Pope said on the postgame podium.
UK lost its starting point guard Jaland Lowe to a shoulder injury in a preseason scrimmage. The Cats lost Acaden Lewis — the player who was supposed to be Lowe’s backup — to a recruiting decommitment that happened too late in the cycle to rectify. That forced Aberdeen to play the 1 for much of the season. And that made things more difficult on UK’s other guards.
The offseason addition of Jayden Quaintance — a projected NBA lottery pick — didn’t pan out. He played only four games due to issues with his surgically repaired knee and hadn’t seen the court in more than two months by the time UK’s season came to an end. There were other injuries beyond that.
Much of the season was spent criticizing Pope for constructing a roster — thought to be the most expensive in a sport now fueled by NIL resources — that simply didn’t work. The coach’s contention that it might have under better circumstances came as no solace at season’s end.
And those wondering what might have been didn’t want to be seen as making excuses anyway.
“We didn’t accomplish our goals, obviously,” Chandler said. “And it was a season where there was a lot of learning, a lot of adversity. But to the fans, our message is we needed to be better. Our standard for ourselves, we lived below that. So that’s unfortunate that we go out of the season feeling that way.”
If some of the fans back home threw in the towel on this season — whether that happened in November or December or with 10 minutes to go Sunday afternoon — the Cats want it known that they never did.
“This team was a team that never gave up,” Dioubate said. “Through our ups and downs, trials and tribulations, we always fought. We never gave up. I know everyone wished the season could have ended in a different way. But I hope they see that we fought every single game and … that we’re not quitters.”
Pope would never say that about this bunch.
“I’m proud of these guys, man. These guys gave us everything that they could give us,” he said. “They didn’t give us everything, but they gave us everything that they could give us, and that’s something. They grew close together through great times and through moments of adversity the entire year.”
At his final press conference, Pope was flanked by the two seniors who carried these Cats as far as they could.
Aberdeen was the steady force who played most of his final year of college basketball out of position, the young man who left his home state of Florida after helping the Gators win a national championship, traveling north to Lexington for a larger role and one more run at glory.
“We didn’t get to where we wanted to get to today, but I’m proud of each and every one of my teammates, my coaches, BBN for just allowing me to be here,” he said. “And I’m forever grateful for them.”
Oweh came to UK after two seasons at Oklahoma. He was the leading scorer on each of Pope’s first two Kentucky teams. He started every one of the Cats’ 72 games in that time. He leaves Lexington as the school’s all-time leading scorer among players who were at UK for just two years.
He didn’t get to where he wanted to go as a Wildcat, but perhaps he laid a foundation for those who will follow.
“Thank you Coach Pope for bringing me in,” Oweh declared after the game. “We fell short this year, but I’m sure the guys next year are going to come and remember this and get the job done, because playing here at Kentucky, that’s what the fans and everyone deserves, is to win.
“Obviously, I’m disappointed that we didn’t get it done this year, but these past two years have been amazing, life changing. I’m just thankful for my teammates that I played with last year, this year. I’ll definitely never forget it, for sure.”
No one in that Kentucky locker room thought it would turn out like this. No one who signed up for this season of UK basketball could’ve fathomed all the heartache along the way.
At the end of the journey, the player who traveled the farthest to make it sat at his locker and thought back on that path.
Jelavic, born and raised in Croatia, playing pro ball in Serbia when he was recruited to be a Kentucky Wildcat, revealed that the “greatest gift” of his first season of college basketball had been that every single person in that room had to battle something.
And that they had kept on battling until the bitter end.
“I think everyone fought through some adversity this season, maybe thought that at some point something was unfair to them. But no one ever showed it,” he said. “Everyone was very supportive, no matter if they were healthy, injured or not playing the minutes they wanted or they’re not playing at the level they wanted.
“And we moved like a family from day one. And went through these ups and downs as a family. And at the end, we ended the season as a family.”
This story was originally published March 22, 2026 at 9:07 PM.
