In the days (and hopefully not weeks) to come, Kentucky’s attention will turn to the most important left shoulder in Lexington.
But on Tuesday night, the focus was on how Kentucky’s role players and little-used backups handled enough of the load to push the Wildcats past rival Tennessee, 74-65, despite an in-game injury to Lamont Butler. The win completed a season sweep of the Vols and earned Kentucky a seventh victory over an AP top-15 team this season. Not only is that the most top-15 wins of any team in the nation this season, but it also sets a new program record at one of college basketball’s most storied blue bloods.
And with the way Kentucky is playing — its sometimes-nonexistent defense notwithstanding — there are probably more such victories coming down the pipe.
Not bad for a team down to its fourth point guard, huh?
Mark Pope entered Tuesday night already shorthanded in his backcourt; not only was Kerr Kriisa still out with a nagging foot injury, but after injuring his wrist in practice last week, 23-game starter and second-leading scorer Jaxson Robinson was unavailable as well, sporting a brace and street clothes on the bench. Luckily, Butler — who recently missed three games with a shoulder injury — was making his second appearance since returning, giving Kentucky at least one dependable lead guard.
Or, at least for 22 minutes.
Butler started Tuesday and was key to Kentucky controlling the game basically from the outset. While he wasn’t dominating as a scorer, his playmaking and defensive aptitude — he had a team-high four assists and three steals — kept the Cats comfortably in the driver’s seat practically all night. Just watch this two-way sequence, arguably the best Butler has had all season, in which he interrupts a Tennessee fast-break with a handsy steal, before immediately finding the outlet pass to Otega Oweh for a dunk.
Sequences like that are why Butler is both a Naismith National Defensive Player of the Year finalist and fourth in the SEC in assists per game. Most importantly, it proves why he’s as important a player as any individual on Pope’s first roster.
Which makes what happened with just under nine minutes to play, and Kentucky leading by two, that much more devastating for Pope’s team. Butler fought through a screen and almost forced another steal on Tennessee’s leading scorer, Chaz Lanier — but in the process, he fell to the court, directly on the left shoulder he just finished rehabbing. He, and everyone in Rupp Arena, immediately knew what happened as the 6-foot-2 graduate writhed on the floor in pain.
Butler immediately exited the game. And wouldn’t you know: just over a minute later, Tennessee retook the lead for the first time since early in the first half, when the score was still 9-8. Butler returned to the bench minutes later wearing a warmup jacket, but when his teammates asked if he could go back in, he shook his head and told them no.
With Butler gone, Pope had no choice but to lean all the way into his remaining guards, including two freshmen who have barely played all season: Travis Perry (129 minutes in 20 games) and Trent Noah (81 minutes in 11 games). By that point, Perry and Noah — who finished with a career-best 11 points in 19 minutes, including three made 3s — had already played more than usual, but Butler’s injury forced Pope to keep them in the game. It wasn’t necessarily their job to win it for Kentucky, so much as it was not to lose it. Noah, for instance, hit two key free-throws late that helped UK keep pace, and Perry provided another steady ballhandler down the stretch.
But winning the game, as it turned out, was up to another one of Kentucky’s guards: Koby Brea, as good a shooter as there is in the nation. Brea entered Tuesday with the second-best 3-point percentage in the SEC (45.1 percent) and the 11th-best amongst all high-major players, and he was in vintage form after Butler went down. After the Vols grabbed two offensive rebounds on the same possession with about five minutes to play, retaking a two-point lead in the process, Brea found himself on a relative island on Kentucky’s subsequent offensive possession. So, why not do what you do best?
That 3 put UK ahead by a point, but Tennessee was still back in the contest after trailing most of the evening. So just over two minutes later, Brea double-dipped in his bag, going back to the stepback trey after he got a favorable switch.
That one, Brey’s third 3 of the night, put Kentucky up six. Almost over. The very next offensive possession, he did his best Butler impression and dished the final dagger.
So much for Tennessee’s comeback attempt. Brea snuffed it out almost single-handedly, his final assist serving as the perfect capper to a 12-2 closeout run.
As for Butler, Pope said postgame that he hopes he’s available to go Saturday when Kentucky travels to Texas. “He was brave tonight,” Pope said of his graduate guard. “I mean, he’s playing as a one-arm bandit out there … I thought he was brilliant.”
The prognosis on Robinson, though, was a little less rosy. “I’m not sure we’re going to get him back anytime soon,” Pope said of the 6-foot-6 sharpshooter who followed him from BYU.
If nothing else, the Wildcats have proven to be adaptable in Pope’s first season, between the backcourt musical chairs and Andrew Carr’s lingering stiffness from his own back injury. Playing without Robinson for the foreseeable future is certainly still a challenge, but with what Perry and Noah showed Tuesday night, replacing his production might be less daunting than previously imagined.
If anything, Kentucky proved again Tuesday that it has the goods to beat anyone in the SEC on any given night, with any different combination of players. The Cats are too far behind in the conference standings to reasonably make a run at the regular-season title, but come the postseason? Especially if Pope’s team is finally healthy, or at least close to it?
Kentucky still might shoulder its way to a deep run in March, after all.
Required reading
(Photo: Jordan Prather / Imagn Images)
