Mark Pope: The story of Kentucky's thrilling win over Oklahoma is more than the last shot

DrewFranklinKSR

oweh-oklahoma-winner — (Photo via Dr. Michael Huang for KSR)

Mark Pope described the final seconds of Kentucky‘s win over Oklahoma in his postgame press conference, detailing the plan to get Oweh downhill and “bum-rush” the rim. The plan worked, obviously, because Oweh delivered the game-winner against his old team for a second time this season.

OTEGA OWEH BEATS THE BUZZER 😱

Kentucky gets the last-second win to knock off Oklahoma 😤 pic.twitter.com/QxGFf3NC6i
— ESPN (@espn) March 14, 2025

Oweh’s final layup as time expired is how the game and the win will be remembered. However, Pope said the greatness of the night began with Kentucky’s collapse in the final minute, not just Oweh going the length of the court to win the game.

“That’s not really the story,” Pope said in his postgame comments. “The story is this. The story is, like, if I just talk about the last play, you lose the greatness of the moment. The greatness of the moment is that Otega turned it over two times in a row in the last minute, blowing a 10-point lead, which I’m responsible for, he’s responsible for, everybody is responsible for.

“What makes that moment so spectacular is he was somehow able, our team was somehow able, to move past the devastation of just kicking to the curb an emotional, hard-fought win and losing Lamont Butler and all the things that came with that.

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“These guys, these really special guys, that love Kentucky so much and want so badly to perform for this team, they were like, OK, this thing went totally bad on us, we totally messed this up, all of us, myself included, and then they still stayed present enough to make a game-winning play in the last five seconds. That’s why that play is so special, right?

“That’s why I couldn’t be more proud of Otega and the whole team for doing that.”

Next play mentality

Otega Oweh credited Mark Pope in his postgame comments, saying Pope teaches the team to move on quickly from mistakes.

“I don’t know why it had to play out like that, but Coach always preaches next-play mentality, and that’s all I was thinking. It was a bummer to turn it over, but there was still time on the clock, so it was just a play to get downhill and a good thing happened.”

I’d say a VERY good thing happened. Great, even.