Vicky Graff Photo
Shorthanded Kentucky gave Alabama its best shot before the Tide wore down the Wildcats in the second half and advanced to the Southeastern Conference Tournament semifinals with a 99-70 rout on Friday night at Bridgestone Arena.
The loss ended Kentucky’s three-game winning streak and gave the Crimson Tide a rare three-peat against the Wildcats this season. Alabama (25-7) swept the two regular-season games and defeated Kentucky for just the third time in 20 tries in the league tournament.
Coming off a thrilling 85-84 triumph over Oklahoma on Thursday night, Kentucky struggled to emulate the same success, especially without its floor leader and its leading scorer, Otega Oweh, playing limited minutes after taking a hit to the face in the first half on an Alabama scoring play.
“Congratulations to Alabama, they played a great game tonight,” Kentucky coach Mark Pope said. “They were aggressive tonight and played well and had a good pace. We were frustrated with our performance tonight.”
The Wildcats were without point guard Lamont Butler, who reaggravated his injured shoulder against the Sooners. Freshman Travis Perry started in place of Butler as Kentucky used a makeshift backcourt by committee to offset the absence of Butler.
Kentucky (22-11) committed 16 turnovers, and the Crimson Tide capitalized on those miscues. Alabama scored 29 points off those miscues, 14 in the first half. The Crimson Tide forced the Wildcats into eight turnovers, resulting in 14 points in transition to forge a 45-37 lead.
“They thrive off of a lot of things that we didn’t do too well today,” Kentucky senior Koby Brea said. “They’re really good at getting out in transition. And we had a couple of bad turnovers that made it very easy for them.”
While turnovers were an issue, Kentucky also could not contain Alabama’s hot shooting in the second half. The Crimson Tide connected on 11 3-pointers, including nine in the second half.
Oweh, who scored the game-winner at the buzzer and 27 points against Oklahoma, required stitches to his lip after taking a blow to his face early in the first half. Oweh scored just eight points and failed to reach double figures for just the third time this season.
Oweh said the bump to his lip didn’t play a role in his lack of production.
“This wasn’t one of my better games,” he said. “It (the lip) didn’t affect (my game) at all.”
Andrew Carr led the Wildcats with 18 points, followed by Amari Williams with 16, and Perry contributed 11.
Labaron Philon led Alabama with 21 points, followed by Jarin Stevenson with 16 points, while Mark Sears and Mouhamed Dioubate added 13 points each, and Aden Holloway finished with 11.
Capped by Alabama’s victory over the Wildcats, the top four seeds won in the quarterfinal round and advanced to the semifinals set for Saturday.
Top-seeded Auburn will take on Tennessee in the first game of a doubleheader, followed by Alabama and Florida. The winners will meet in the finale set for Sunday.
Kentucky will await its destination for next week’s NCAA Tournament. The Wildcats are projected to be a No. 3 seed. The pairings will be announced on Sunday.
“We didn’t come this far to just come this far,” Carr said. “We’re looking in the mirror, trying to continue to get better and focus on the NCAA tournament.”
16 Responses
I’m thrilled with the job Coach Pope has done this year. But, he’s too nice. He needs to realize that he’s not in Utah playing with a bunch of Mormons anymore.
When Doug Shows calls a foul on 00 and he’s laying on the floor bleeding, IMO Coach Pope should help 00 get up and take him and put him in Shows face and ask him how the foul could have been on him? Coach Pope needed to get thrown out of the game. At some point, he has to take a stand.
Some people might call me a conspiracy theorist, but we have won so much for so long
that SEC officials, referees, and the other schools in the conference are tired of it.
I watched the replay. To me that wasn’t a foul on Alabama . Although the refs missed plenty .. Bottom line is if you can’t stop drives to the rim you aren’t going to win.
You have a point UKfan. Every SEC team is built and coached to beat Kentucky via thug ball play. The SEC front office knows that a dominant Kentucky team means fewer SEC teams in the Big Dance and that means less money for the conference. From a stacked schedule to directed officiating, the SEC front office is getting their way. I don’t see this changing. It may be time for Kentucky to take a serious look at leaving the SEC for football and basketball and play as an independent school. The era of student athlete is gone. Now college teams are merely paid professional farm teams. Recruit/pay accordingly.
"You guys are so mean, I’m gonna take my ball and leave. I’m only going to play group of five teams now". That is the biggest crybaby thinking I’ve ever heard. The SEC suddenly wants to conspire against the team that’s been it’s Flagship program for 80 years is what Qanon believers would say. Where is the "stacked schedule"? All the SEC teams play the same teams in conference. UK makes its own non-conference schedule. It’s a simple solution to the Cats problem. Recruit big, strong, fast, athletes that jump out of the gym at every position. Atleast Pope isn’t whining about it. Hopefully he knows what has to be done to fix it. Surely he doesn’t really think this is a "beautiful" team. He was put in a bad position from the start. He deserves a pass this year. Pope doesn’t miss shots, free throws, or fail to get rebounds. He’s not the one who can’t guard a fifth grader. However as I’ve been told before, he recruited and coaches them.
But he and the staff are responsible for developing this team and developing effective gameplans for each opponent, and the grade for either would certainly be no higher than a C. Pope is a very nice guy and wants to be loved by all but he is too soft, and the players have fed off of that all season.
Pope wants to keep everyone happy. He sure doesn’t coach like his idol Pitino. After some of the losses they had this year, Pitino would have made them practice all night. I watched the St. John’s game yesterday and I could here Pitino yell things like, "why don’t you try to get a rebound", and "if you can’t guard him I’ll take you out". If you’re going to pamper players and make them soft, just give them all a participation trophy and forget it.
Always a conspiracy to stop UK. Never ends.
Even Goose Givens said on the radio broadcast of the game "The refs are not going to let Kentucky win this game."
Our defense isn’t very good. Start with that
Better defense would have gotten 00 knocked out instead of 7 stitches in his lip. Better defense would get Butlers arm amputated instead of a hurt shoulder.
Travis Perry can’t play defense but I’ll take him over Shadeon Sharpe any day of the week.
Stay on topic..nobody is cutting down Travis Perry. If you can’t stop penetration the whole defense breaks down, then you get help leaving others open.
Sharpe has nothing to do with this team
Goose Givens said it best, UK only has one player that can get to the basket whenever he wants. The best SEC teams have 3 or 4.
That speed and quickness also translates to better defense. UK has gotten better defensively, but they are still a ways away from being an Elite 8 defense and on a bad night aren’t even a round of 32 defense. Just depends on how they match up.
The other thing that hurt them so much in several games this year is their inability to finish within 6 feet of the basket. I imagine if you could go back through all the games, UK probably struggled to even shoot 50% on the season within 6 feet of the basket.
Lastly, is UK’s inconsistency at the Free Throw Line. Some games they look like world beaters at the line and others they look like they don’t even practice.
Anyone of those things can get you beat against a good team. This team has just struggled with consistency from nearly every aspect of the game. What I mean, is there is not really any one thing you can know this team will do well night in and night out; not even effort due to games where they are beaten out for the 50-50 balls.
Yes.. consistently inconsistent. Things are going to get better at UK.. Just keep the coffers of money full.
Well well well here we are again. This looks familiar watching the rest of the tournament from the outside looking in. We aren’t going to win when our top 3-4 players are all banged up. Its not going to happen. When you have guys on the end of your bench at the beginning of the year playing the most minutes at the end of the year you know the season is a disaster. Pope has done a great job for having so many injuries. Carr still isn’t 100% which matters when your a team that runs and guns. Robinson is out for the year he was the second best player on the team. Butler has had a shoulder injury which he cake back a game or 2 too fast. Oweh gets beat up every game because he’s super aggressive. When you have Perry running the point as a true freshman Chandler in at the 2 and Noah at the 3 your not going to win many games. If they would have played this much all year we would have sucked and not made the tournament. If you remember in our non conference schedule and even the beginning of our conference schedule we were doing fabulous, but Perry Noah and Chandler wasn’t getting any minutes except clean up duty. Now that they are playing large parts of the minutes its over. Unless we can get Butler healthy which I think he will hurt his shoulder again in the NCAA tournament our season will be over. We can’t win with them yet. They were #10,#11,#12 on a 12 man roster all year. I don’t know what people expect but there defense sucks and in game action thes great shooters in practice shoot the ball very badly. How does this happen? We’ve had other boys from Kentucky who would light it up in practice but when the lights came on they were terrible. I think Perry is shooting 26% on his 3 pointers and Chandler is shooting 27%. You can’t win with guys shooting that bad from 3. They aren’t good on defense so there offense has to compensate for there defense and its just not happening. I think they will bring them percentages up next year but they need to at least shoot 38% or better. With a pure shooter they need to be above the 42% shooting from 3 to even make a difference. Defense will never be a specialty for any of the 3 freshman. They could be decent at defense in the next year or 2 but they will never be a defensive specialist they aren’t fast enough. I still think next years team will be much better than this year. I just hope we make it to at least the sweet 16 this year. To me that will be a accomplishment with such a thin roster because of injuries. I just don’t think the freshman are ready and there is nothing wrong with that unless your a top 20-30 freshman you probably won’t be ready playing against a bunch of juniors and seniors with NIL. They will all 3 be ready for reserve roles next year but they aren’t ready this year and I been saying it all year. Perry actually to me had the highest basketball IQ out of the freshman but in the game he looks lost more times then not. I’m just anxious to see how much better all 3 of the freshman are next year. That how we will know how there playing days will play out here at Kentucky. If they are sitting on the end of the bench next year that’s what there career might be here at Kentucky. I think if Chandler stays he could be the 6th man next year. Noah has surprised me more than Abby of the freshman. He gives it 100% at all times and I love that I think he might improve more than any of the freshman plus he has size to play the 3. Noah will back up the 3 next year. Perry will backup the point but needs to work his ass off on shooting the ball better which I don’t know how practice translates to the games because you have some guys who can’t make a shot in practice and lights it up on game day then others who can’t miss in practice and for some reason can’t shoot the ball when the lights come on. I have never understood that because people say you play like you practice. Its definitely not the 3 freshmans fault when you have 7 5th year seniors on the team also a junior and a sophomore. I can only hope that everyone on the team comes back next year so we can build off this year. The kicker is going to be if Oweh comes back. I’ve heard its 50/50 from the NBA or coming back to college. I don’t know how true that is but I can’t remember a wildcat who averaged over 16 a game and came back except maybe Oscar. T. Chandler is a west coast kid so I could see him maybe transfer to Utah or BYU and get a shot at starting next year. You never know. I think everyone else comes back. Idk what Kerr is going to do as well. Would you save him a scholarship? I think he’s a step up from Perry which he should be he’s 4 years older than Perry. We definitely would need him at the point next year but that would mean less minutes for Perry.
Pope has done a good job but not a great job. What players have really improved during the year? Some of the higher ranked teams that we beat earlier have all gotten better for most part and the avereage teams that beat us have stayed same or regressed slightly. We were led to believe that we had 9 quality guys on this team. As I have asked many times before, what do these coaches do during the week? We were told we had high quality coaching staff. We do not have a collective good BB IQ and really don’t do any fundamentals that well. We casually pass the ball on the outside and don’t seem to have anything inside programmed. The interior has had a "welcome" sign up all year. If you don’t score you get fouled. Bama had to have scored at least 80% of their shots inside and we couldn’t have done 20%. The freshman have taken some abuse but why not much ever mentioned about Almonor and Garrison? They have been serial slackers most of the year. We have not seen good Kentucky basketball for a few years and not much reason to feel will change in short term.