Otega Oweh says Kentucky is hitting its stride at the right time: "This is really us"

Injuries have been one of the main storylines for Kentucky this season, to the point that many wrote the Cats off when the news Jaxson Robinson is out for the remainder of the season broke. Today’s 91-83 win over Missouri is proof that the Cats have some lives left, in part because of the adversity they faced over the past few months.

Kentucky got off to a horrible start vs. Missouri, allowing the Tigers to jump out to an 11-4 lead in the first seven minutes. The Cats clawed back to take the lead at the 9:07 mark off a three-pointer by Travis Perry. They never gave it back, leading by nine at halftime despite Lamont Butler and Otega Oweh getting into foul trouble. Oweh started the second half with a vengeance, scoring 20 of his game-high 22 after halftime. Afterward, he said a lot of the credit for Kentucky’s late first-half surge should go to the young guys. Freshmen Collin Chandler, Trent Noah, and Travis Perry combined for nine points in the first half and helped keep Missouri at arm’s length with inspired defense.

“That first half, it set the tone, really,” Oweh told Goose Givens during his postgame radio interview. “And then me and Lamont, we got two quick fouls but that second group came in with Collin [Chandler], Koby [Brea], Trent Noah, [Brandon Garrison], they just uplifted the energy and that’s the big thing that we’ve been preaching, just getting stops and being intense on defense, and I feel like in that first half, it really set the tempo for the whole game.”

Chandler finished with eight points, just three shy of the career-high 11 he set on Tuesday vs. LSU. One could argue that he, Noah, and Perry wouldn’t have been comfortable stepping up on the road like they did today without all the playing time they’ve gotten due to all the injuries the Cats have dealt with.

“That just shows the makeup of our team,” Oweh said. “Even these past couple of weeks, and even the month, I would say, our roster has been kind of different. It’s been fluctuating in terms of people being injured and stuff like that. So a lot of the young guys had to grow up quick. So, that just shows that we’re much deeper now than the young guys, they’re ready to play, and they know what it takes to be out there and really contribute. Those young guys, they did a great job.”

Earlier this week, Mark Pope said his team was looking forward to getting some continuity with their lineups now that Jaxson Robinson is officially out for the year. The 31-point win over LSU at Rupp was a good first step, but an eight-point win over a top-15 Missouri team on the road was a much more significant one.

“This was definitely a win that we needed and we wanted to get bad,” Oweh said. “The last game of the regular season, and it’s on the road too. So, these are the types of match-ups that we live for, and we knew we had to come onto the road and play with some grit, some intensity, and, we just had to guard, because we’re going to score on offense, like just with all the weapons we have, but our biggest thing is guarding and we did that today.”

That’s just one reason Oweh feels confident heading into the postseason. As the Cats prepare to head to Nashville for the SEC Tournament, he feels like they’re firing on all cylinders. Oweh said that although he and his teammates cherish the privilege of wearing Kentucky Blue, they’re now adopting the scrappy underdog mentality it took to get them to Lexington.

“I’m so comfortable. Like, this is us. This is what I’ve been telling everybody, even when Lamont was injured. Like, I’ve just been waiting for him to get back and [Andrew Carr] to get right because I know what we could do when we have all the pieces — and we still don’t, but you’ve got to make do with what you have.

“So this is us, just playing intense and just going out there and hooping; that’s what got us here. We just have to try and obviously embrace that we’re at Kentucky, but then remember what got us here, and it’s that chip, and that intensity. So this is really us.”