After being overlooked throughout his career, Otega Oweh is shining: "Now I'm at Kentucky."

At this point, it’s not a hot take to say that Otega Oweh has been Kentucky’s best player through five games. Honestly, you’d make better use of your time by trying to figure out who has been the Wildcats’ second-best player through the early stages of Mark Pope‘s first season as head coach.

After another spectacular performance on Friday night against Jackson State (a team-high 21 points without a single turnover), Oweh continues to put up big numbers. He currently leads Kentucky in scoring at 16.2 points per game. The 6-foot-4 junior is also averaging 3.8 rebounds and two steals in just 22 minutes per outing on insane shooting splits of 60.4/46.7/84.2.

But not many expected this kind of start from the two-year Oklahoma transfer. He was good but not great as a sophomore with the Sooners. Oweh was somewhat of an afterthought when he transferred to Kentucky as part of a brand-new, 12-man roster. Even after another big night on Friday, his name wasn’t brought up in the postgame press conference until the very last question.

“It’s interesting with Otega, right?” Pope responded. “Otega is 8-12. He’s 4-4 from the free-throw line. He’s got 21 points, two assists, zero turnovers, three steals… And we don’t get to him until the very end of the press conference, when he kind of does that every single night.”

Oweh’s certainly not an afterthought to the world of college basketball though, especially not on the opposing team’s scouting reports. He’s arrived and he’s been incredibly consistent. The way he begins games has fueled Kentucky to great starts. The Big Blue Nation might want to prepare itself for NBA Mock Draft boards to include Oweh in the near future.

But to reach this point — the point where he is the best player at a Blue Blood program — Oweh had to overcome plenty of doubters along the way.

“It’s a lot,” Oweh said when asked how many times he’s been overlooked in his basketball life. “I’m not gonna get into it now, for real. Just when I was younger in AAU, all those things. High school, when you’re early, like freshman year. That was a lot of figuring out and a lot of people overlooking you cause if you’re not ranked a certain number, you get overlooked. Those things happen but now I’m at Kentucky. I feel like everything happens for a reason.”

Whatever figuring out Oweh had to do in years past, it’s clearly paid off. On a team with a slew of talented players and experienced veterans, he’s now standing out above them all.

“He’s just bringing joy every single game,” Pope said. “The only time I got mad at Otega today was when he was celebrating with his guys too much after a play and not running in transition defense but he was really special. But I have to stop talking about him because he’s starting to get a big head back here.”

“My bad coach!” Oweh screamed from the back of the room.

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