Kentucky basketball is out of the SEC Tournament.

The Wildcats exited the 2025 edition of the conference tournament at the quarterfinal stage: 6 seed UK was thrashed by 3 seed Alabama 99-70 on Friday night at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville.

The 29-point result was the largest margin of victory by Alabama over Kentucky in series history, and it gave the Crimson Tide a third straight win over the Wildcats for the first time. All three of these wins by Alabama over Kentucky came this season.

Mark Pope’s Wildcats struggled with turnovers on Friday. The Cats committed 16 of them, which led to 29 Alabama points.

UK was without fifth-year guard Lamont Butler for the contest after he reinjured his left shoulder on Thursday night during Kentucky’s SEC Tournament second round win over Oklahoma. Prior to Friday’s game, Pope offered a positive injury update on Butler, indicating that Butler will be back for Kentucky’s NCAA Tournament run next week.

And the Cats sure could use him.

Alabama’s offense hummed to the tune of 1.238 points per possession against UK on Friday. Crimson Tide freshman guard Labaron Philon — 21 points, four assists and three steals — was especially prolific.

Fifth-year forward Andrew Carr led the way with 18 points for UK, which still hasn’t advanced to the SEC Tournament title game since 2018.

So now, Kentucky’s NCAA Tournament résumé is set. The Wildcats will enter March Madness with a 22-11 overall record, an 11-9 mark in all games against SEC opponents and with eight wins this season over schools ranked in the top 15 of the AP poll at the time of the game.

Most bracketology experts seem to be in agreement that Kentucky will, most likely, be a 3 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

We’ll know for sure at 6 p.m. Sunday when the tournament Selection Show takes place.

Until then, here’s everything that Pope had to say after Kentucky bowed out of the SEC Tournament.

Kentucky head coach Mark Pope watches his team play against Alabama in the SEC Tournament quarterfinals at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee. Ryan C. Hermens [email protected]

Opening statement.

Congratulations to Alabama, they played a great game tonight. Were aggressive tonight. Played well. Had a good pace. We were frustrated with our performance tonight. We’ll take questions.

Question about Lamont Butler’s injury update.

Yeah, so totally different, unique injury. The imaging was perfect. So we’re hopeful that he’ll be back in action — I was hoping the second half, but didn’t quite make it there.

Question about moving on from the SEC Tournament and looking toward the NCAA Tournament.

I hope it’s really hard ‘cause this is not okay for us. I hope it’s really hard. But we’re here to do hard things. Like, that’s why we’re here. That’s what we’re chasing, is hard things.

I hope it’s really hard and I hope we do it.

Question about Kentucky’ turnovers against Alabama.

Always give credit to the opponent, for sure. They played a great game. I was disappointed. The whole night we were a little stagnant in terms of playing in the character of the way that we play.

Tons of credit to Alabama. Some disappointment in our response to the moment.

Question about Travis Perry.

I thought Travis competed hard. He’s probably our next best option at the point to just give us some options to have any type of playcalling or diversity to what we do at all right now.

There weren’t a ton of options there. I thought he competed really hard.

Question about Kentucky’s 3-point shooting (UK went 5-for-19 on 3s).

Yeah, again, we’ve talked about it all year long. Our capacity to earn shots for each other. It would have taken a Herculean focus on that tonight. We just didn’t have it.

I thought we competed. I thought we had a good competitive spirit in the first half. I thought it was really challenging for us in the second half.

Question about how this season’s SEC has prepared Kentucky for the NCAA Tournament.

We talked with it since the beginning. It’s either going to tear you to shreds or it’s going to make you better. I think either team is going to decide which is going to be their path.

If you had the fortitude and togetherness to make it, it can make you better. So that’s the challenge.

Question about Otega Oweh’s follow-up performance (eight points) after the second round win over Oklahoma.

Yeah, every guy on this team is really important. We need great efforts. When we’re good, we have everybody playing well.

Otega battled through a bunch of stuff tonight. He’s one of the guys that we really rely on. We rely on every single guy on our team.

This story was originally published March 15, 2025 at 1:28 AM.