KSR Today: Kentucky Looking For Answers After Ole Miss Loss

by:Nick Roush•about 9 hours•

RoushKSR

Kentucky C Amari Williams grabs a rebound at Ole Miss, via Petre Thomas-Imagn Images

It was a tale of two halves. Kentucky was lifeless for 20 minutes. Something woke them up in the halftime locker room, but it wasn’t enough to leave Oxford with a win. The Wildcats fell 98-84 to Ole Miss for their fourth loss in five games.

Chris Beard’s squad came ready to play. Three early three-pointers helped them jump out to a 10-point lead only five minutes into the game. Kentucky was giving Ole Miss open looks from long-range and at the rim. They shot better than 60% from the floor and made nine three-pointers to lead by 23 points at halftime. It was the third-largest halftime deficit in SEC history for the Kentucky Wildcats.

It’s not that Kentucky was doing one particular thing poorly. Everything was wrong. Thankfully, that dreadful effort and attitude did not linger.

Kentucky trailed by as many as 27 points in the second half before the Wildcats started chipping away at that deficit. A Jaxson Robinson four-point play provided enough juice to get the deficit to 11. Feeling the urgency, Kentucky defended for almost 29 seconds when Jaylen Murray sunk a contested three. That felt like the dagger.

A Koby Brea three cut the Ole Miss lead back down to 12 around the 4-minute mark, but once again, Ole Miss was prepared to answer, staving off the Kentucky comeback with one big shot after another.

As Mark Pope said after the game, “This is Kentucky. We don’t do moral victories.” He is 100% correct, but I think all of Big Blue Nation is grateful that this team finished by showing a little pride and some heart. They need a lot more of that to hit a hard reset and collect themselves before returning home to face South Carolina on Saturday.

Another Game Without Lamont Butler

One cannot blame all of Kentucky’s first-half shortcomings on the absence of Lamont Butler and Kerr Kriisa, no matter how abundantly clear the Cats missed their ball-handling and defensive disruption. One man does not make this a good defensive team, but the Wildcats fell from No. 70 in defensive efficiency to No. 110 without him.

It feels like things are trending in the right direction for Butler and maybe for the Kentucky defense too. The Wildcats threw a lot of junk at Ole Miss in the second half, playing variations of zone before matching up man-to-man. It looked better, even if the Rebels continued sinking shots.

“My guys are playing hard. I’m doing a poor job with our team defensively right now. It’s a credit to Ole Miss and it’s a real issue for me. I gotta figure out how to help our team have more of a presence,” Pope said after the game.

“We have all of the tools, all of the weapons to be a great defensive team,” added Otega Oweh. “We just have to have that urgency. We’re going to figure it out. We just didn’t have it in the first half.”

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Kentucky History was Made

It’s only happened four times in school history. Two of those were at Ole Miss. This was the first in a loss. In one of the game’s final possessions, Amari Williams made the dish to Otega Oweh who finished at the rim. It was the big man’s 10th assist of the day, completing a triple-double. He also had 12 points and 10 rebounds in the loss to Ole Miss.

That wasn’t the only Kentucky statistical history made. According to Jon Scott of Big Blue History, Trent Noah and Ansley Almonor made history in the wrong way. Almonor played 15 minutes and Noah logged 13 without recording a stat. That’s the second and third-most minutes without a statistic in UK history, trailing only Kenny Walker, who played 24 minutes and logged a goose egg back in 1983.

Single-Game Kentucky Baseball Tickets On Sale

Want to secure your spot at Kentucky Proud Park this spring? Today is the day to make sure you’ve got the best seat in the house. Single-game tickets go on sale at 10 am EST. As Nick Mingione reminded us at Kentucky baseball media day, they still have some season tickets available too. Hear more from the leader of the Bat Cats before they begin their season next weekend in Nashville.

A Big Game in the SEC

Kentucky was on the wrong end of a Top 25 loss in SEC play. Who will it be tonight, Tennessee or the red-hot Missouri Tigers? Take a closer look at tonight’s slate and catch all of the action at KSBar and Grille where it’s WINGSday.

Oregon at #24 Michigan, 6:30, BTN
Butler at Seton Hall, 6:30, FS1
#15 Missouri at #4 Tennessee, 7:00, SECN
#2 Duke at Syracuse, 7:00, ESPN2
Louisville at Boston College, 7:00, ACCN
#23 Illinois at Rutgers, 8:30, BTN
Creighton at Providence, 8:30, FS1
Arkansas at Texas, 9 pm, ESPN2
LSU at Georgia, 9 pm, SECN

Show Recommendation

Sports don’t always have to be so serious. That’s a big key to our success at KSR and it’s why I’m loving SVPod. The football talk between Scott Van Pelt and Stanford Steve is enlightening, but this is the good stuff you can’t get anywhere else.

Safe to say @notthefakeSVP won’t be riding the Guardians of the Galaxy ride next time 🚫🎢 pic.twitter.com/ByMt1WVmmK
— SVPod (@_SVPod) February 4, 2025