There was one sequence of events Saturday afternoon in Coleman Coliseum that pretty much summed up the frustrations of the day.
With Kentucky trailing Alabama 36-21 and fewer than five minutes left in the first half, Jaland Lowe dribbled around between the top of the key and halfcourt, and not much of anything was happening anywhere else.
Mouhamed Dioubate and Otega Oweh both attempted to set screens, none of them leading to anything good. Dioubate called for the ball while Latrell Wrightsell was defending him at one point. Lowe kept dribbling. Dioubate later tried to post up Houston Mallette. Lowe kept dribbling.
Wrightsell and Mallette were both former teammates of Dioubate, who spent the past two seasons at Alabama, and the first-year Wildcat had a clear size advantage against each of them.
It all led to Lowe dribbling toward the basket and spinning into an off-balance jumper that clanged off the rim, the rebound slipping through his own hands, the possession ending with an Alabama board and a foul on Lowe in the backcourt.
Dioubate threw his arms up in the air, clearly frustrated. Lowe checked out of the game during that dead ball, but not before he and Dioubate engaged in a testy exchange at midcourt.
At the next dead ball, Dioubate made his way to the bench, too. Lowe was waiting for him.
Another teammate, Brandon Garrison, had tried to sit in the seat next to Lowe, but the UK point guard — nine inches shorter and 75 pounds lighter than Garrison — forcefully guided him elsewhere. Lowe wanted that seat empty. A couple seconds later, he told Dioubate to occupy it.
While play continued on the court, the two Wildcats had it out again. Dioubate appeared to be genuinely upset. Lowe appeared to be genuinely looking for a way to make it right. Lowe put his hand on Dioubate’s back and stated his case. Dioubate listened, lashed out again, and then they turned their attention back toward the floor.
As soon as they stopped to watch, Mallette nailed a 3-pointer to give Bama a 40-21 lead. Dioubate dropped his head. Lowe leaned back in his chair. Mark Pope called a timeout. The Coleman Coliseum crowd erupted, and the Wildcats’ conversation went silent.
Alabama won 89-74 in the end, another low point in a Kentucky season that has been a disappointment so far. These Wildcats are clearly still a work in progress. A few days later, Dioubate and Lowe walked into the Memorial Coliseum media room together, and they readily admitted it.
Their heated exchange wasn’t the only one of the day, but it was a perfect example of the collective exasperation this team felt in Tuscaloosa. And both players embraced that it had happened.
“It was just a lot of emotions in the game at the time,” Dioubate said. “He knew how much I wanted to win that game, but I was just trying to tell him, ‘I got a mismatch on me. Just try to find me. Keep trying to find me. I got the mismatch on me.’ That’s my friend. I know he couldn’t guard me down there.
“So I was just trying to let him know, ‘Just look for me, bro.’ Like, ‘I’m open.’ And he said he got me, he’s gonna find me. But it was a lot of emotions. And it looked like we were really arguing. But, you know, that’s just how we communicate a lot. But, yeah, we talked it out.”
As soon as Lowe went to the bench first, he knew he needed to talk to Dioubate as soon as he joined him there. What happened next might have looked bad to a general observer, but neither player came away with hard feelings, and Lowe knew a second conversation was necessary.
“You got to know your guys,” he said. “I’m super close to Mo. Me and Mo have a great relationship, as far as what we know and what each other act like. So me and Mo, we could probably yell at each other all day and night, and it won’t matter. Because we know our intentions. We know we both want to win. …
“We just know that it’s all betterment for each other. And, I mean, shoot, as soon as he sat down and we talked about it, we were on the same page. And we were all good about it.”
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There weren’t many positive takeaways for what happened in Tuscaloosa, but Pope was actually pleased with some of the angst he saw his guys exhibiting amid the blowout.
“You talk about confrontation, our guys got pretty chippy towards the end of the first half, which was a very welcomed response, for me,” Pope said Monday night on his weekly radio show. “They got really chippy with each other, and their frustration was overflowing a little bit, and then they got really vocal. Everything (was) going wrong. That was the most comforting thing that happened towards the end of the first half. I was like, ‘OK, the care is here. It’s coming through.’”
Pope specifically mentioned some back and forth heading into the halftime locker room. At that point, he said, Oweh took charge and told his bickering teammates to take it to the back.
“He didn’t have a perfect game, and he had some moments that I know he wished he could take back,” Pope said. “But he also had some spectacular moments, and he played with his whole heart. And probably the moment I was most proud of him was — as we were dealing with all the frustration that we brought on ourselves at the end of the first half — Otega was the guy that kind of gathered the guys together as they were chirping with each other, and just ushered them into the locker room.
“And when the story is written on this team, it’ll be moments like that that we look back on like, ‘You know, those are key, pivotal moments.’ And we just need to keep persevering and growing.”
Perseverance will be necessary as the Cats navigate SEC play, and growth will be required if this bunch is to go anywhere in March. Under the circumstances, that’s understandable.
Going into the game against Missouri on Wednesday night, it’s worth reminding that these Wildcats still have just three halves of basketball with everyone on the roster available. And, even in those three halves, key players have been playing at far less than 100% health.
The second half of the St. John’s game — when Lowe returned from injury and Jayden Quaintance made his debut — has been the best 20 minutes of UK basketball this season. With Lowe sitting out the Bellarmine game a few days later, the SEC opener at Alabama was supposed to be the first full game with every Wildcat available.
But Lowe isn’t anywhere close to 100% as he continues to battle his right shoulder injury, Quaintance is still working his way back after spending 10 months on the sidelines due to a torn ACL, and Dioubate told the Herald-Leader on Tuesday that he had the flu all of last week and was cramping badly in the second half Saturday, forcing him to sit for the final 8:18 of the game.
Amid months of injury, illness and recovery, these Cats are clearly still getting to know each other.
“We’re feeling closer and closer each day,” Lowe said. “I just feel like it’s just a matter of guys finding a click together. Just playing with guys. It’s just a lot of reps. That’s all you can ask for at this point is just reps with guys. In practice and games. Once you get reps with guys, you can try to figure things out.
“I think game reps are the most important thing you can have. Of course, practice matters, for sure. But those game reps, you get an actual live feel of how things are going to go. You get to make corrections in real-life time (while) going against a defense that you’ve never gone against.”
Those collective game reps have been relatively few so far.
There was another incident in the second half Saturday, when — the Cats trailing 79-68 and trying to make a comeback — Oweh and Quaintance were playing a two-man game on one side of the court. At one point, it looked like Quaintance could have handed the ball off to a streaking Oweh, who was flying toward the basket and looking for an open lane.
Instead, Quaintance held onto the ball, Oweh popped back out to the perimeter, and Quaintance abandoned backing down his defender to kick the ball out to Oweh, who apparently didn’t think it would be coming his way. The ball slipped right through his fingers, and Pope had to quickly duck on the UK sideline to keep it from hitting him in the head. There were dejected looks all around, and Oweh gestured to Quaintance as if to say he should have done something else.
Oweh and Quaintance, who barely practiced with the team before making his debut, haven’t shared the court much. Oweh was out of action for nearly two months himself due to a preseason foot injury. Lowe is being held out of many contact situations in practice to help avoid more hits to that shoulder. Dioubate missed five games — and lots of practice — earlier this season due to a high ankle sprain, and then he was sick during the week of prep for Alabama.
“We just got to be super intentional when we are playing with each other,” Oweh said Saturday. “Obviously, we’re just trying to get healthy so, you know, we can’t have those guys play all the reps in practice. So, when they are on the court, we have to be super intentional. … We just have to have our heads in the game. I mean, those guys — what they bring to us when they’re on the court — any team would want that.”
The pieces might be there. But they’re not fitting just yet. Assuming everyone can stay healthy — a big assumption given the injury luck during Pope’s first season and a half at UK — better chemistry should come with more of those game reps that Lowe talked about Tuesday.
“In a matter of time, we’re going to start learning each other better,” Dioubate said.
Ever since losing to Louisville in the second week of the season, the Wildcats and their coaches have pushed back on the narrative that these players “don’t like each other.” Oweh has found the mere premise laughable. Others have joined in to dispute it. Pope was asked again about the fan narrative Monday night.
“There’s this insatiable hunger for all of us to find new information. And so there’s so many stories that kind of grow legs that actually just are real fabrications,” he said. “This team is as close and cares as much about each other as any team I’ve ever been around.”
Pope went on to say that so many people care so much about UK basketball that it creates a constant churn of stories that range from the incorrect to the absurd. Since he’s taken the job, he said he’s heard that his wife, Lee Anne, has been pregnant and died in a plane crash. He said he recently got a text from a concerned friend because there was a rumor that he’d checked himself into a local hospital.
None of those things were true. But truth is not a prerequisite for something to end up on message boards or social media.
“Everybody cares so much that stories get out there, just because we’re trying to find something to talk about,” Pope said. “We haven’t performed up to the standard we want to on the floor. But these are great kids, man, and they are pulling for each other. And they’re competing with each other, but these are special, special guys. And when this is all said and done, we’re going to all feel a real pride for how they came together and what they accomplished this season.
“We’re in a rocky space right now, but it’s not at all because we don’t have guys that love each other or care about each other or are willing to fight for each other.”
