Mark Pope's first Kentucky team only needed one postseason game to bring back "March Magic"

The end result of Kentucky’s first postseason under Mark Pope remains to be seen — and the forecast looks bleaker if the Cats will be without Lamont Butler; however, you can’t argue that it’s off to an unbelievable start.

Coming into Thursday, it had been 727 days since Kentucky won a postseason game, the NCAA Tournament first-round victory over Providence in 2023, a run that lasted just a few days longer before Kansas State sent the Cats home. It had been 2,190 days since Kentucky’s last SEC Tournament win in Nashville, a 73-55 victory over Alabama in the SEC Tournament quarterfinals. Since then, the Cats were 1-5 in the event, the lone victory coming in Tampa; combine that and Kentucky’s 1-3 record in the past three NCAA Tournaments and you can understand why fans were a little on edge coming into Bridgestone Arena last night — even if they did their best to take the edge off all day long on Broadway.

A few hours later, it looked like Big Blue Nation was headed toward more March Sadness. The first blow came when Lamont Butler left the game with an injury to his left shoulder, the one that’s bothered him for the past two months. Kentucky struggled without its starting point guard at first but eventually rediscovered its stride. Otega Oweh, Koby Brea, and Brandon Garrison led the Cats on an 11-0 run to take a 12-point lead with 4:30 remaining. The lead was still in double digits, ten, with 1:26 remaining. Then, disaster struck.

The Sooners outscored the Cats 14-5 in the final 86 seconds of the game, ten of those points coming from Jeremiah Fears. Kentucky turned the ball over three times in that span, twice in the final 26 seconds. With 5.6 seconds left, it looked like the writing was on the wall.

Except it wasn’t. For the second time in 15 days, Otega Oweh hit a game-winner against his old team, a contorted one-footed dagger right into the Sooners’ hearts. Oweh celebrated with his teammates in Norman; last night, 16,000 jubilant Kentucky fans joined them in Bridgestone Arena, and millions more at home, a thrilling and cathartic moment for a fanbase that’s been dying for one. A few more of those and Oweh will join Andrew Harrison in Kentucky Basketball folklore.

Oweh and his teammates took a victory lap, swarming the SEC Network set and making their traditional lap around the court to greet fans, who swarmed the sidelines to meet them. Mark Pope has had plenty of special moments at Kentucky as a player and so far as a coach, but even he needed an extra beat to drink this one in before embracing his wife Lee Anne.

Kentucky players and Mark Pope celebrating with fans after the game. Awesome scene pic.twitter.com/MSUqb3RxWa

— Tyler Thompson (@MrsTylerKSR) March 14, 2025

Afterward, Mark Pope shared some of what might have been going through his mind at that moment, words that struck a chord with a fanbase that was told that the SEC Tournament didn’t matter for over a decade.

“I mean, I’m not going to put him in harm’s way for sure,” Pope said of Lamont Butler’s status in his postgame press conference. “It’s hard ’cause this matters. Like, it’s hard to explain. When you walk into this arena and you finish a game like that, and the whole game you see all these people, these Kentucky fans. It’s an arena full of Kentucky fans.

“Most of these Kentucky fans probably have never been able to go watch a game at Rupp Arena because they can’t get in. They save and plan for a year to come here and do this. I know that sounds unique, and it is really unique. So there’s just this massive pull of our guys. This is our family, we want to take care of them, we want to perform for them. We want this to be great and special for them.”

“We get to be tested in an epic way…We want it so bad.”

Koby Brea and Otega Oweh had already left the podium to return to the locker room when Pope said that, but you could feel Pope’s influence and the impact of the crowd in their earlier comments.

“Our coach, he does a great job of letting us know what we’re playing for,” Brea said. “We’re playing for ourselves and the university. Obviously, there’s a whole lot of more people that games like this impact. Just trying to represent the whole state of Kentucky really.”

“Big Blue Nation never fails to surprise me,” Oweh said of the crowd at Bridgestone Arena. “Obviously, I heard about it. But just living in the moment, it’s crazy. It was packed out, so much blue, so much energy. We feed off of that. This is something that we’re all going to remember. We just got to cherish these moments and be where our feet are. It’s just definitely a blessing to be here and playing for the state of Kentucky.”

Kentucky doesn’t have time to linger in last night’s joy. Tonight, the Cats face No. 3 seed Alabama, a team that’s already beaten them twice this season. They’ll be coming off an emotional, late night and will likely be without Butler. When asked how they would regroup in time for the Crimson Tide, Pope found athletic director Mitch Barnhart’s eye in the back of the room.

“Yeah, it’s incredibly challenging; that’s why it’s March magic, right?” he asked Barnhart, who nodded emphatically, his gutsy decision to hire Pope a year ago once again reaffirmed. “It’s March magic. If you can do it, then you do it, right?

“We get to be tested in an epic way. We lost twice to Alabama. They’re a top-four or -five team in the country. We’re a little beat up and a little shorthanded. All that’s fine.

“That’s actually where you write the great stories. That’s why we’re all attracted to March, is because there are just these few teams that step up and do things that nobody thinks they can do, under major duress and all kinds of problems. If you don’t want to be part of that, don’t go to March.

“We are dying to be a part of that. We want it so bad. We’re going to go fight and we’re going to see what we can do tomorrow.”

Even if they come up short, Kentucky fans will know that the possibility is still there after years of disappointment, which is pretty magical in itself.

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