‘We needed a guy like that all season.’ Jaland Lowe gives UK what it must have
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- Jaland Lowe played in a shoulder harness and delivered Kentucky’s late rally.
- Lowe scored 13 points and closed the game with Kentucky’s final three buckets.
- Kentucky used Lowe’s penetration and grit to erase a seven-point halftime deficit.
It was as if Jaland Lowe had offended the basketball gods.
Multiple times Saturday, as a desperate Kentucky fought against visiting Indiana for a victory the Wildcats keenly needed, Lowe would slice through the IU defense, get to the front of the rim all but unobstructed — and then see his layup attempt roll off the rim.
“Smoking some easy ones hurt, hurt the heart, for sure,” Lowe said afterward.
Yet on a night when Kentucky perseverance finally yielded a Wildcats’ victory in a power-conference matchup, no one showed more grit than the 6-foot-1, 170-pound Lowe.
With Lowe, his injured right shoulder enclosed in a protective harness, playing his best game to date as a Wildcat, Kentucky (7-4) rallied from seven down at halftime for a 72-60 victory over Indiana (8-3) in the resumption of the long-dormant series between the two border rivals.
Lowe scored 13 points, and closed out the Hoosiers by making Kentucky’s final three buckets of the game in the final 5:23. He also added five rebounds, two assists and a steal.
It did not feel like a coincidence that UK outscored IU by 24 points in the 24 minutes Lowe spent on the court.
In addition to getting his own shot, Lowe’s ability to get into the lane off the bounce gave the struggling Kentucky offense a dimension it has lacked this season while the transfer from Pittsburgh has been limited to five games due to the injury to his right shoulder.
“He was really aggressive today,” UK forward Mouhamed Dioubate said of Lowe. “He got downhill. He made a lot of reads. He had an offense going. We needed a guy like that all season long. He hasn’t been with us for (a) majority (of the) season.”
It was the first regular season meeting between the Kentucky and Indiana since IU’s 73-72 win over UK on Christian Watford’s famous 3-point buzzer beater on Dec. 10, 2011, in Bloomington.
The return of what was once one of the fiercest rivalries in men’s college basketball drew a crowd of 20,061 — which included a good bit of Indiana red — into Rupp Arena.
The sight of Indiana’s candy-striped warm-ups — and the desperation of a Kentucky team that had previously lost at Louisville, and to Michigan State, North Carolina and Gonzaga in its previous four marquee matchups this season — brought out an energetic fan performance by the UK backers at Rupp.
“Ton of love for BBN for showing out tonight,” UK coach Mark Pope said. “They were just unbelievable in the gym, and we’re so grateful.”
When the Kentucky roster was being constructed, the plan was for Lowe to be UK’s primary creator and one of the team’s cornerstone players.
But the shoulder injury he initially suffered in UK’s Blue-White Game had limited him to 70 combined minutes of playing time this season prior to IU.
Lowe said the inactivity is why he had trouble converting layups early against the Hoosiers.
“It’s just a little rust, you know,” he said. “I feel like I just, I got to get back into the flow of things.”
As Kentucky tried to do against Indiana what it failed to do in the 67-64 loss to North Carolina — close out a game from the lead — Lowe found enough “flow” to shut the door on IU.
He scored on a layup at 5:23 to put UK ahead 65-54.
The Wildcats did not tally again until Lowe converted in the lane twice, at 2:18 and at 1:47, to turn an uncomfortable seven-point Kentucky edge to an 11-point lead that all but assured victory.
“J-Lowe certainly helps us,” Pope understated afterward.
When asked how close he is to feeling like his normal self, Lowe said “In my mind, 100% Jaland Lowe would (have) no shoulder injury at all and (would) not be having to wear a brace.”
The Kentucky point guard said, as of now, he expects he will have to play in the constrictive shoulder harness all season.
“I think that’s the plan,” Lowe said. “With a shoulder injury like this, you never know. I don’t take this game for granted anymore. Just step out on a practice court, you never know what could happen, and (you) can’t really control things like this. All you can try to do is get it as strong as you can and hope for the best when you get out there. “
Even with Lowe’s performance and the big lift Kentucky got from the return of Dioubate (14 points, 12 rebounds, five steals) from an ankle injury, the Wildcats’ offense was no thing of beauty. The Cats shot 37.9% for the game (22 of 58) and made only 3 of 15 3-point tries.
Yet, in vanquishing Indiana, UK may have found the way it has to play to have any degree of success this season — not pretty, but all grit and effort.
In a game Kentucky absolutely had to have, that is exactly what Jaland Lowe gave the Cats.
