Five things you need to know from Kentucky’s 85-84 SEC Tournament win over Oklahoma
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Game day: Kentucky 85, Oklahoma 84
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Thursday night’s men’s basketball game between Kentucky and Oklahoma in the Southeastern Conference Tournament at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee.
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Five things you need to know from No. 6 seed Kentucky’s 85-84 win over No. 14 seed Oklahoma in the men’s basketball SEC Tournament second round:
1. Oweh’s encore. Otega Oweh did it again.
In Kentucky’s 83-82 win at Oklahoma on Feb. 26, UK guard Otega Oweh had the ultimate “How do you like me now?” performance against his former team.
The 6-foot-4, 215-pound junior scored a career-high 28 points, 23 in the second half, against the Sooners. Oweh scored Kentucky’s final 18 points of the game. The last two of that 18-point outburst came on a twisting shot in the lane with six seconds left that yielded UK’s winning margin.
On Thursday night in Nashville, Oweh stuck it to the Sooners again.
After Kentucky had blown a 12 point lead in the final 4:31 of the game and was down 84-83 with six seconds left, Oweh saved the Cats again.
He took an inbounds pass, drove it down the right side of the court, and hit a running 5-footer with his left hand along the baseline with 0:05 left.
For the game, Oweh hit eight of 14 shots, two of three treys, nine of 10 free throws and finished with 27 points, four rebounds, five assists and three steals.
In six of Kentucky’s past eight games, Oweh has scored 20 or more points.
Oweh entered the game with 999 career points as a collegian. So his first basket of the game, a 3-pointer with 18:45 left in the first half, pushed him over 1,000 points for his career.
The Newark, N.J., product now has 1,026 career points — 498 in his two seasons at OU and 528 so far this season at UK.
2. For UK, a most distressing development. Kentucky super-senior Lamont Butler left the game after playing only eight minutes in the first half. The point guard went to the locker room and never returned to play.
At halftime, Mark Pope told sideline reporter Molly McGrath on the SEC Network that Butler was “getting imaging done.” Kentucky radio play-by-play announcer Tom Leach subsequently told the UK Sports Network’s listener that Butler’s issue was his previously injured left shoulder.
While converting a driving layup with 9:49 left in the first half, Butler appeared to slam his left side into Oklahoma defender Dayton Forsythe.
With UK having already lost super-senior wing Jaxson Robinson and super-senior point guard Kerr Kriisa for the season to injuries, the importance to Kentucky’s NCAA Tournament aspirations of having Butler on the court cannot be overstated.
When Butler returned to the Kentucky bench midway through the second half, sideline reporter McGrath said UK emphasized that the point guard was out for the remainder of Thursday’s game.
Over three separate stretches, Butler has missed eight games this season due to injuries. UK is 4-4 in contests in which the San Diego State transfer does not play at all.
However, since fellow point guard Kriisa was lost, Kentucky is 2-4 without Butler.
3. Cats survive a late-game meltdown. Kentucky took a 77-65 lead on a Brandon Garrison dunk with 4:31 left in the game. The Wildcats were still up six, 83-77, after Koby Brea sank a pair of foul shots with 41 seconds left.
Playing without a point guard, however, UK proved eminently vulnerable against Oklahoma’s desperate late-game pressure defense.
Jeremiah Fears rifled in a 3-pointer with 34 seconds left to pull Oklahoma within 83-80.
Kentucky power forward Andrew Carr lost the ball to Oklahoma’s Fears with 26 seconds left. That led to a layup by the Sooners’ Jalon Moore with 23 seconds left to bring OU within 83-82.
Fears then stole an Oweh pass with 20 seconds left, and he converted that into a driving layup with six seconds left that put Oklahoma ahead 84-83.
As it turned out, that set up Oweh for more heroics.
4. Mark Pope in league tournaments. With Kentucky’s victory in the new UK head man’s first SEC Tournament contest, Pope is now 9-9 as a college coach in league tourneys.
Pope went 3-4 in the Western Athletic Conference Tournament as head coach at Utah Valley (2015 through 2019). As BYU head man, Pope was 4-4 in the West Coast Conference tourney and 1-1 in the Big 12 Tournament.
With the victory, Kentucky is now 2-4 in the SEC Tournament in the 2020s. Prior to Thursday night, UK had not won a SEC tourney contest since 2022 in Tampa, Florida, a 77-71 win over Vanderbilt in the quarterfinals.
5. “Early-round Kentucky.” Thursday night’s game was only the fifth time UK had begun SEC tourney play prior to the quarterfinals since the league expanded to 12 teams in 1992.
With the victory over Oklahoma, the Wildcats are now 4-1 in early-round SEC Tournament games in that time span.
The list of such games for Kentucky:
▪ 2005-06: Beat Mississippi 71-57 in first round.
▪ 2006-07: Beat Alabama 79-67 in first round.
▪ 2008-09: Beat Mississippi 71-58 in first round.
▪ 2020-21: Lost to Mississippi State 74-73 in second round.
▪ 2024-25: Beat Oklahoma 85-84 in second round.
This story was originally published March 14, 2025 at 1:23 AM.
