Mark Pope was barely finished coaching Kentucky’s last game before his attention had turned to the next one.
On Wednesday night — sitting in Rupp Arena, discussing a much-needed, emphatic victory over Vanderbilt — Pope looked ahead to the Wildcats’ matchup with Alabama.
“An epic challenge of all challenges,” he said to describe the upcoming road game against the No. 4-ranked Crimson Tide, the clear preseason choice to win the SEC, a team that was No. 1 in some national rankings back in the fall and remains one of the national title favorites.
Pope’s praise continued a couple of days later, when — on the day his Cats departed Lexington for Tuscaloosa — he used the word “challenge” another umpteen times.
“Incredibly talented” and a guard that can “impact the game in so many different ways” was how he described Mark Sears, the SEC preseason player of the year and Alabama’s do-it-all offensive threat.
This was an Alabama team that dropped 102 points on Kentucky in Rupp five weeks earlier.
This was a player coming off a 35-point performance against Missouri earlier in the week.
And this was a Kentucky team still missing Lamont Butler and Jaxson Robinson and Kerr Kriisa, a patchwork backcourt that’s still very much a work in progress as new guys are stepping up and old guys are carrying more of a burden.
This would indeed be a challenge for the Cats, who were 12.5-point underdogs before the ball was tipped. And it turned out to be a 96-83 loss for Pope’s team. And Sears dropped 30 points on Kentucky.
But it took a while for that challenge to materialize.
Alabama big man Clifford Omoruyi threw down a ferocious dunk 30 seconds into the game, and it appeared like the onslaught might be imminent.
But then Koby Brea hit a jumper. And then Travis Perry hit a 3-pointer. And then UK went off.
In no time, Kentucky led 20-9. And at that time, Sears had just two points.
Sears hit a 3 and then a layup — 20 seconds apart — but the Cats answered with another run.
Kentucky led 30-18 at one point in the first half. The Coleman Coliseum crowd — sold out, of course — appeared dumbstruck. There was even an audible “Go Big Blue!” chant amid the sea of crimson in the early going, and they had to bump up the arena PA volume to drown it out.
For the Cats, the good times didn’t last.
“The game got a little helter skelter,” Pope said. “We got a little fatigued. We had some protection issues. We had some defensive coverage issues that were hard.
“It was kind of the whole thing.”
The whole thing culminated in a 24-4 run. Alabama’s 12-point deficit turned into an eight-point lead, and Nate Oats’ team needed less than six minutes to do it.
Oats — firmly established now as an offensive mastermind among college basketball coaches — has been lamenting his team’s defensive effort and execution, especially in the wake of a 110-98 loss at Missouri earlier in the week.
But after Kentucky blew their doors off early — 20 points in the first 5:15 — the Tide buckled down. The Cats scored only 20 more points over that final 15ish minutes of the first half. They trailed by seven points at halftime. Try as they might, they couldn’t pull back even after that.
You gotta give Kentucky a ton of credit,” Oats said. “To come out like they did, knowing that they were down bodies. And I think Coach Pope’s done a really good job, kind of galvanizing that crew — having them ready to go. … So I give them a bunch of credit.”
Oats ran down the list.
Freshman guard Travis Perry — making his third consecutive start in place of the injured veterans — scored a career-high 12 points, came up with four steals and committed zero turnovers in 28 minutes.
Freshman guard Collin Chandler was a plus-7 in the box score, Oats — the former high school math teacher — noted, and he had five points and two steals. Chandler had scored just two points total since Nov. 29 before tallying a career-high seven points in the win over Vandy on Wednesday and then following that up with another good showing in Tuscaloosa
Freshman forward Trent Noah didn’t have his best game, but he’s had some big ones recently, said the Alabama coach.
“They’ve had guys step up and play well,” Oats said.
In that opening attack Saturday night, it was fifth-year players Koby Brea and Andrew Carr doing most of the damage. Both hit double figures before the halfway point of the first half. Both drew praise from Oats after the game. Brea finished with 20, Carr had 17, and Amari Williams tallied 17 points, 11 rebounds and six assists — another on-the-ball-heavy outing from Kentucky’s 7-footer.
There were offensive challenges, for sure, for Pope’s Wildcats.
Otega Oweh — a double-figure scorer in his first 26 games at UK — was held to just two points on 1-for-9 shooting, all of them 2-point attempts. He fouled out with 6:49 still on the clock.
The Cats made six of their first 10 3-point attempts but went just 3-for-16 from deep after that.
A general question about those offensive woes was met with a different answer, however.
“To be honest, our main focus has just been guarding the ball,” Brea said in response. “I feel like we focus more on the defensive end, and if we do that well, I feel like the offense takes care of itself. We just trust our system, trust in our coaches and what they want us to do offensively. And I think when we’re aggressive doing those things, it turns out pretty well.
