Kentucky basketball shows its best — and worst — in SEC road loss versus Vanderbilt

Posted by author January 25, 2025 Basketball

Spread the love

Kentucky basketball has shown this season it possesses a split personality.

One side of the coin: an offense as electric as any in the land. The other: a defense as dismal as any in the SEC.

UK displayed each of those diametrically opposed sides Saturday versus Vanderbilt.

The worse half won.

After trailing by 14 at the break, the Wildcats rallied in the second half, at one point taking a seven-point lead. But ultimately, they couldn’t overcome the Commodores, losing 74-69 at Memorial Gymnasium in Nashville.

Mark Pope himself even alluded to his team’s Jekyll-and-Hyde nature.

“We were really disappointed with how we performed for parts of the game, and I was really proud of our guys for parts of the game,” said Pope, in his first season as UK’s coach.

Kentucky’s not-so-stellar side came to the fore in the first half. The Wildcats (14-5, 3-3 SEC) entered committing just 10 turnovers per game; they had that many giveaways in the first half alone. The Commodores (16-4, 4-3) only were too happy to oblige the visitors’ generosity, scoring nine points off the Wildcats’ turnovers.

Capitalizing on those miscues helped the hosts trot into the locker room with a 41-27 advantage, finishing the half on a 20-4 run.

“They (were) kind of forcing us to do stuff that we weren’t comfortable doing. (We) made certain decisions that we shouldn’t have made,” said Kentucky guard Otega Oweh, who posted the second double double of his college career — his first with the Wildcats — thanks to game highs in points (21, on 8-of-14 shooting from the field) and rebounds (12), with the latter figure doubling as a personal best in a single outing. “We should have just (stuck) to what we do. We let them kind of speed us up a little bit.”

Yet UK — Pope’s club is No. 9 in both major polls (the USA TODAY Coaches and the Associated Press Top 25) — pulled itself off the mat in the final 20 minutes, demonstrating the explosive offense that means it’s rarely out of any game. The Wildcats scored 31 of the first 41 points of the second half, taking a 58-51 lead with 8:39 remaining.

Kentucky’s ever-present defensive deficiencies reared their head at the most inopportune time, however.

In the last eight minutes of the game, Vandy outscored UK, 23-11.

“We just had some turnovers toward the end that gave them more opportunities than they should have had,” Oweh said.

Kentucky heads right back to the Volunteer State for its next outing.

It takes on bitter border rival Tennessee at Thompson-Boling Arena on Tuesday. The contest is slated to tip off at 7 p.m. in Knoxville, Tennessee. It will air nationally on ESPN.

This story will be updated.

Reach Kentucky men’s basketball and football reporter Ryan Black at rblack@gannett.com and follow him on X at @RyanABlack.