‘The most-booed team’ in UK history gives BBN a March Madness moment to cherish
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- Otega Oweh banked a 40-foot 3 at the buzzer to force overtime and spark victory.
- Kentucky edged Santa Clara 89-84, advancing to the NCAA round of 32 vs. Iowa State.
- Brandon Garrison and Mo Dioubate provided defense and scoring that sealed the win.
When Santa Clara’s Allen Graves rifled in a 3-pointer off the right wing with 2.4 seconds left to give the Broncos a 73-70 lead over UK in the NCAA Tournament round of 64 on Friday, the Cats experienced the basketball version of a near-death experience.
“A little bit of devastation,” said Collin Chandler.
Mo Dioubate was battling back season-ending tears. “I’m not gonna lie,” he said.
Rather than the extinction of what has been UK’s wildly up-and-down season, what happened next was a reminder of why March Madness is, annually, the best three weeks of the American sports calendar.
His team down three points and 2.4 seconds to save the season, UK star Otega Oweh took an inbounds bounce pass from Denzel Aberdeen. Oweh dribbled three times up the left side. Pulling up some 40 feet from the basket, Oweh uncorked a 3-point bomb that banked through the rim as the final horn was sounding.
“I didn’t call ‘bank,’” a smiling Oweh said later. “I just got it up out of my hands. 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.”
So behind overtime heroics from Oweh, Dioubate and Brandon Garrison, the Midwest Region No. 7 seed Cats outlasted No. 10 seed Santa Clara 89-84. The Cats (22-13) earned a berth Sunday in the NCAA tourney round of 32 against No. 2 seed Iowa State.
Afterward, UK coach Mark Pope saltued his team’s resilience.
“That ‘next-play mentality,’ I think that’s something that you talk about all the time but you learn through experience — and our guys have a whole bunch of (that experience), man,” Pope said. “They have a whole bunch of ‘next plays.’ So I was proud of that.”
In UK basketball lore, Friday will long live as “The Otega Oweh Game.” In addition to the overtime-forcing shot, the 6-foot-4, 200-pound product of Newark, New Jersey, contributed a career-high 35 points — six of them in the OT — along with eight rebounds and seven assists.
Oweh’s 35 points vs. Santa Clara give him 1,237 for his two-year UK career. He passed Bill Spivey (1,213 career points) and is now the top scorer in UK men’s hoops history among players who only played two varsity seasons.
“This guy just, man, he shows up every single game in only a unique Otega Oweh way,” Pope said. “It’s just brilliant. I think we’re three-quarters of the way through the first half and he’s got five or six or seven points and ... then he finished the game the way he does. He’s a unique, unique player, man, and he brings so much, it’s really a credit to him.”
From the time Kentucky played poorly in a road loss at Louisville in the season’s third game, through blowout early-season defeats to Michigan State and Gonzaga, there has been a negative undertone to the 2025-26 UK season.
It has been my contention that no Kentucky men’s basketball team in history has heard as many boos from Cat fans as the current one has.
Nothing the Cats could do — not beating Rick Pitino, not winning at Tennessee, not beating John Calipari, not silencing the Rocky Toppers again — seemed large enough to fully pierce the shell of negativity that has engulfed the UK season.
Maybe Oweh’s signature performance, the boost Kentucky got from its backup big men and the Cats prevailing in a NCAA Tournament mini-classic will at last give the Big Blue Nation a moment that overrides the year’s overall negativity.
For all of Oweh’s brilliance, UK would not have won without the contributions of Garrison and Dioubate.
The 6-10, 245-pound Garrison finished with 10 points, seven rebounds and six blocked shots. Three of Garrison’s blocks came in overtime. Two of them came on back-to-back Santa Clara possessions when Garrison switched onto Sash Gavalyugov and snuffed out the Bronco guard’s 3-point attempts.
“He was their switching nightmare,” Dioubate said of Garrison.
Continuing his strong late-season play, the 6-7, 220-pound Dioubate had 17 points, eight rebounds and three blocks of his own.
“I think I played pretty decent,” Dioubate deadpanned.
Where “Oweh’s gem” will rank in the pantheon of all-time Kentucky NCAA Tournament performances will depend on what is yet to happen. If Friday’s thriller is the launch of an unexpected UK run through March Madness, its importance in Cats lore will be elevated.
But even if it proves a one off, it was an electrifying moment that should give the Big Blue Nation a moment from the current season it can long relish.
It’s hard not to think that a Kentucky team that has heard the boos, has pushed through ample adversity — some of which has been self-created — and continued to fight deserved this moment of March Madness exhilaration.
