What's been the key to Kentucky's defensive growth beyond Lamont Butler's return? Focus.

You don’t need me to tell you Lamont Butler is one of the best defenders in college basketball, a clear game-changer on that end of the floor and SEC Defensive Player of the Year contender. On the surface, it’s not unreasonable to suggest Kentucky‘s recent growth defensively is directly tied to Butler’s return following his three-game absence — and why the re-aggravation of his shoulder injury is problematic as the regular season winds down.

Let’s start with the big-picture results before getting into the why, though, nailing down just how much Butler had to do with it. Returning against South Carolina, the Wildcats gave up just 57 points — 19 in the first half — on 32.8 percent shooting and 18.2 percent from three. One game later, Tennessee scored just 64 points while shooting 42.6 percent overall and 16.7 percent from deep. It was the first two-game stretch all season UK held its opponent under 65 points in back-to-back outings.

“I might have these numbers a little bit off, but four games ago, we had the — we get a rank of the effectiveness of our game plan compared to everybody else that’s played them this season. Four games ago, I think it was either 17 and 20 or 20 and 23 four and three games ago,” Mark Pope said Thursday ahead of Kentucky’s matchup at Texas. “And then with Lamont back, we’ve been the second-best and the third-best game plan. Against South Carolina all season long, we had the second-best defensive game execution. And against Tennessee, we had the third-best execution.”

Pretty brilliant results for a team that couldn’t stop a nosebleed right before this breakthrough. The Gamecocks and Volunteers aren’t offensive powerhouses — the former being the worst in the SEC — but growth is growth.

With Butler’s status in question moving forward, the hope is Kentucky can be closer to the team that won the final 8:40 without him and Jaxson Robinson on the floor 21-12 against Tennessee, allowing just four makes on 14 field goal attempts in that stretch.

“We joked about it as a staff (Wednesday) night that was probably like 99 percent our genius as a staff and 1 percent Lamont’s presence. I’m hoping that that’s the case, although I don’t think that’s actually true,” Pope said. “He has a huge impact on the game. He’s a really massive part of this.”

Whether it’s hours, days or weeks Butler is out for the Wildcats, they have no choice but to adjust. His absence can’t be the reason they revert back to the team that gave up 98 points at Ole Miss — an unacceptable defensive effort across the board, no matter who was on or off the floor.

Those last couple of segments against Tennessee were good enough with the guys we’ll likely see in Austin. Pope wants to see more of that, focus being the difference upon review. When they’re locked in, the Cats can fight defensively.

“He’s a big part of it, but the part that we’re hanging our hat on right now is that our focus is a little bit better, that we have guys stepping up around around him,” Pope said. “We’ve talked so much about Koby Brea the last couple weeks, and he’s made a massive, massive jump defensively. Our bigs have had a much, much better presence defensively.

“Our on-ball — not pressure, because it’s not overkill, but presence. Our on-ball presence, having a little bit of a disruptive nature. We’re hoping that that’s been a lot of it because that’s the stuff we actually get to carry into the game Saturday where we might not be able to carry Lamont in. It’s all of the above, and we’ll kind of see. We’re gonna get to find out.”

Shorthanded or not, time to see what this group is made of.