Otega Oweh: "We didn't come all this way just to get punked."

Kentucky was on the cusp of getting run out of the gym, trailing by 16 at halftime before the deficit grew to 18 at the 19:19 mark of the second half. It got ugly for the Wildcats in a hurry to open the game — the Bulldogs led by 10 just under nine minutes in — and could have gotten really ugly had they taken the easy way out by letting go of the rope.

Instead, Mark Pope‘s squad stormed back to not only compete, but pull off the miraculous comeback victory to move to 8-1 on the season.

An ugly start led to a beautiful finish for a full 40-minute redemption arc that saw the Cats transition from pretenders to contenders.

“We just came out here, had a job to do,” Otega Oweh told Goose Givens in a postgame radio interview. “I’m just glad we were able to get the win through all that adversity.”

The junior guard was like the rest of us watching the game unfold, knowing this Kentucky team is way too talented to be folding like a lawn chair under pressure the way things started. It wasn’t acceptable, and the Wildcats felt that way in real time.

That’s where their passion to respond came from. It was rooted in embarrassment.

“The personnel we have, like, there’s no reason for that to happen in the first half. But sometimes, you know, ebbs and flows of the games are going to happen,” Oweh continued. “Just coming together as a group and just saying that we didn’t come all this way out here just to get punked and for us to get embarrassed. We had to have some pride, and we definitely had to show that in the second half. I think we all did.”

That’s what he wants this team’s identity to be, one that refuses to back down from a challenge. Kentucky will either win or go down swinging if he has any say in the matter wearing blue and white.

“We just have to stay even-keeled. In games like this, the whole entire world is watching,” he said. “Not a lot of people believe, but as long as the people in our circle believe and just want to go out there and win and play hard, forget about the score at the time and go out there and do the things that we do.

“Just play hard. By the time you look up, you’ll see we either won or put up a fight.”