UK slayed some NCAA Tournament ghosts, but the Cats will have to be better moving forward
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Game day: Kentucky 76, Troy 57
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader’s and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Friday night’s men’s basketball game between Kentucky and Troy at the NCAA Tournament in Milwaukee.
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There was 10:14 left in Kentucky’s 2025 men’s NCAA Tournament opener against No. 14 seed Troy.
The No. 3 seed Wildcats were 14 points into what became a 16-0 run that turned another uncomfortably close NCAA Tournament tilt with a plucky underdog into a rout. On the Fiserv Forum court, Lamont Butler did something that we have not seen much so far in the 2020s from Kentucky players.
Butler smiled.
In a feel-good victory that should have been salve to a traumatized Big Blue Nation, Kentucky slayed the NCAA Tournament ghosts of Saint Peter’s and Oakland on Friday night with a decisive 76-57 win against Troy in the Midwest Regional round of 64.
For much of UK’s regal hoops past, opening-round NCAA Tournament victories were as regular as the sunrise. But after UK lost to No. 15 seed Saint Peter’s in 2022 and No. 14 seed Oakland last year, Friday’s ouster of the No. 14 Trojans was genuinely a feel-good result.
For seven of the 10 healthy scholarship players on the Kentucky roster, it was their first NCAA Tournament victory. Mark Pope is no longer a head coach who has never won an NCAA Tournament game. As a team, UK is through to the round of 32 for only the second time in the 2020s.
“Tonight, we’ve got to enjoy this,” said Lamont Butler, the gutty Kentucky point guard. “We need to celebrate this win. … Tomorrow is when we get back to work.”
Before we nitpick a moment of UK basketball uplift, there was much to feel good about in the win against Troy.
Otega Oweh turned in another gem for Kentucky, producing his seventh game with 20 or more points in UK’s last 10 contests. Oweh chipped in eight rebounds and six assists to go with his 20 points.
UK got a a big 3-pointer from freshman Trent Noah in the first half and nine significant second-half points from frosh guard Collin Chandler.
Power forward Andrew Carr — who made all five of his shots while playing for Delaware in an 80-60 loss to Villanova in the 2022 NCAA Tournament — hit his first five shots Friday night against Troy. Alas, with another March Madness “perfecto” seemingly in reach, Carr missed his final two shots of the game.
“That happens to some people, I guess they miss some shots every once in awhile,” Carr joked.
As it was, Carr finished 5-for-7 from the floor with 13 points, two rebounds, three assists and three blocked shots.
Most spectacular of all, Amari Williams — all 7-foot, 262-pounds of him — yanked a defensive rebound, dribbled coast-to-coast the length of the court and exploded at the rim for a thunderous dunk.
As one who has watched a truly distressing amount of UK basketball in my time on Earth, I remember few more explosive plays by a Wildcat than that.
“That was c-ah-raz-eeee,” UK’s Oweh said. “I had a perfect angle, I was in the corner. I knew Amari could dunk, but I didn’t know he could take off like that.”
It looked like the kind of play Milwaukee Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo, the erstwhile “Greek Freak,” might make. So Williams’ play “was probably because we were in the Bucks arena,” Oweh said.
From the time Pope was hired as UK head man to replace John Calipari last spring, the reasonable goal for his first season coaching at his alma mater has been basic: for Kentucky to win more than one game in an NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2019.
To do that against Illinois on Sunday in the round of 32, Kentucky has to play better out of the gate than it did against Troy. The Trojans were within two points of UK, 25-23, with five minutes left in the first half.
Had Troy, a 29.9% 3-point shooting team entering the game, had its own Jack Gohlke, that slow Kentucky start might have led to another crushing round-of-64 disappointment.
The Cats also need Williams, who finished with five points, 13 rebounds, four assists and a block, to finish better around the rim. On the night of his coast-to-coast dunk, the Kentucky center also missed three layups.
Said Williams: “I’m kind of disappointed in my finishing tonight. I should just go up and dunk it. And, hopefully, I execute from the foul line a lot better (he was 1 -for-5). That will really help us going forward.”
If Butler — who gutted his way through 25 minutes of playing time against Troy with his injured left shoulder in a harness but missed all five of his field-goal tries — could find his shot before Sunday, that would be huge, too.
Still, and Kentucky backers should not lose sight of this, analyzing areas to be fixed before the next NCAA Tournament game is a gazillion times better than trying to figure out how the Wildcats lost to Saint Peter’s and Oakland.
This story was originally published March 22, 2025 at 12:02 AM.
