Otega Oweh is a Rule Breaker that Mark Pope Loves

Otega Oweh (UK Athletics Photo)

Mark Pope had to construct a Kentucky roster in very little time that he thought would not only fit his offense but also where the players could fit together even though they had never played together before.

Pope’s offense is built on 3-point shooting and cuts to the basket. Perhaps the one player who did not seem like the best fit when the season started was Oklahoma transfer Otega Oweh, who was not a great 3-point shooter his two years at Oklahoma.

Now he’s Kentucky’s leading scorer and had another 20-point game in UK’s NCAA Tournament win over Troy Friday that puts the Cats into Sunday’s second round game against Illinois in Milwaukee at 5:15 p.m. He also had eight rebounds, six assists and two steals — numbers no UK player had ever put up in a NCAA game.

“Otega is shooting 36 percent from the 3-point line right now. He’s pretty good, right? I think every coach in America would echo the same thing, and that is that certainly we want to find players that have certain capabilities and attributes that fill certain areas of the stats sheet, that have certain skill levels. But when it comes down to the game, the game gets way simpler,” Pope said Saturday.

“I’m going to let you guys in on a little secret. None of us coaches are really rocket scientists, right? You gotta go really guard, you gotta really rebound the ball, and you gotta share it. And it probably doesn’t get a lot more technical than that.”

Coaches also like players they know they can count on to do their best every day, something Oweh does.

“If you think about his greatest skill, I mean from a statistical space — like that you can grab the data you can grab — he lasted longer than any player in all of power four conferences in terms of being consistent every single game and being a double-figure scorer without me running actions for him or him getting a ton of extra shots,” Pope said.

“So the fact that he brings it every single day and wants to compete every single day, that’s probably more important than any of the things that I might list on a sheet. Conveniently for us, he’s doing all the things that you list on the sheet also.

“I mean, yesterday he was a six assist guy in a game where a really good Troy team — the reason they’re really good is because they’re so disruptive and so disorienting and so confusing with how they guard. And here Otega Oweh is just leading us in assists. So he’s been brilliant in all those ways.”

Pope sometimes has to let Oweh have the freedom to do things he might  now allow every player to do. Pope calls him a “rule breaker” but means that as a compliment.

“He’s capable of breaking rules. He’s also growing his game, and maybe he’s growing his game in a nontraditional way. So it’s a very literal thing for me,” Pope said. “Sometimes when things go wrong and they’re not choreographed exactly the way I draw them up or I designed them or I taught them, I’ve learned that I just kind gotta like turn away and be you know what?

“There’s going to be something great with him right around the corner. And the reason that I believe that is because he keeps doing it. He keeps doing it over and over. And the truth is is that he’s able to do some things outside of the context of my normal expectation of a player of how they do it. I’m working hard to coach Otega, and Otega is also teaching me about what he can do that pushes the boundaries. There’s a give-and-take there. And I love that player-coach relationship. I actually think that’s really important.”

Pope said he wants to think outside the lines because if he doesn’t it can be boring.

“I want him to be respectful and diligent and trusting of the concepts that are winning concepts. But I also want his creativity and his unique athleticism. And that’s not just jumping high or running fast, but it’s contorting his body and being able to do different things that normally might not be a great play for somebody else,” the Kentucky coach said.

“We’re both learning together kind of where he can do that consistently and where he can’t. And that process is really artistic more than it is scientific, and it’s really fun. I think it’s really beautiful and I’m enjoying it, but it does take some restraint because there are times where you’re like that just went bad, and if you stayed within the confines that I draw for most guys, it wouldn’t happen, but you would also lose out on the things that he can do that surprise me, right? And so it’s really fun to work with guys like that.”