Nashville, Tenn.
As soon as Lamont Butler went down with another injury to his bothersome left shoulder late Thursday night, the chances of this Kentucky team bringing back any hardware from Bridgestone Arena were greatly diminished.
The idea of a victory over Alabama in the SEC Tournament quarterfinals Friday night — to avoid a bit of dubious UK basketball history — seemed unlikely.
The reality for the Cats ended up being far worse.
Alabama defeated the Wildcats 99-70, handing UK its most lopsided SEC Tournament loss — by a wide margin — and becoming just the third team in history to defeat the Cats three times in a single season.
The lowlights were many.
▪ The 29-point loss was just Kentucky’s eighth double-digit defeat in an SEC Tournament game, and it was the first by more than 20 points. UK hadn’t lost a league tournament game by more than 10 points in 12 years.
▪ For the sixth consecutive SEC Tournament, someone other than the Wildcats will lift the championship trophy. That’s now the longest skid in the program’s history.
▪ The loss was Kentucky’s most lopsided in any setting since Duke decimated the Cats 118-84 in the 2018 edition of the Champions Classic.
▪ In the 161st game in the series history between UK and Alabama, this was the Wildcats’ largest losing margin.
▪ And Alabama joined the 1978-79 Tennessee Volunteers and the 2013-14 Florida Gators as just the third team to beat Kentucky three times in one season.
“We were frustrated with our performance tonight,” Mark Pope said as part of a brief opening understatement.
Kentucky forward Brandon Garrison (10) reacts following a 99-70 loss to Alabama in the SEC Tournament quarterfinals at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee. Ryan C. Hermens [email protected]
The first-year Kentucky coach promised at his introductory press conference back in April that the program would put a great emphasis on winning games in the SEC Tournament — an event the former UK leader, John Calipari, famously downplayed this time of year.
Even amid injury issues and long odds, Pope reiterated in recent days his goal of winning the event. The Cats did claim a victory in their first game of the week — an 85-84 thriller over Oklahoma on Thursday night — to win an SEC Tournament game for the first time in three years, but the good times ended there.
Playing without Butler once again — the Cats’ starting point guard missed his ninth game of the season and his seventh in the past two months after first injuring his left shoulder Jan. 14 — Kentucky struggled to get much going on either end of the ball against Alabama, especially in the second half.
The Cats committed 16 turnovers, and Bama outscored UK 29-6 in points off turnovers.
With Kerr Kriisa and Jaxson Robinson both out for the season — and Butler sitting with them on the Kentucky bench — freshmen Travis Perry and Collin Chandler played on-ball roles against a veteran Bama team. They combined for two assists and five turnovers.
Otega Oweh — the hero of Thursday night’s win over Oklahoma — was popped in the mouth in the first half Friday night, left the court a bloody mess and was largely neutralized upon his return.
Oweh ended up with eight points, missed five of his six shots from the field and committed five of UK’s turnovers.
“We did a good job on him,” Alabama coach Nate Oats said of the Tide’s D on Oweh. “Some of the other younger guys I thought didn’t handle the pressure maybe, as well.”
The Cats struggled to generate good looks. They shot just 5-for-19 from 3-point range, among their season lows in both categories. They went nearly 20 minutes in one stretch of the game without a make from long range.
Oats said Alabama targeted four UK shooters: Koby Brea, Ansley Almonor, Trent Noah and Perry. Those four combined to go 3-for-16 from deep. Not many of those were open shots.
“We’ve talked about it all year long. Our capacity to earn shots for each other,” Pope said. “It would have taken a Herculean focus on that tonight. And we just didn’t have it. I thought we competed. I thought we had a good competitive spirit in the first half. And I thought that was really challenging for us in the second half.”
Kentucky never trailed by double digits in the first half and was down just seven at halftime. Alabama roared out of the break, forcing Pope to call two timeouts relatively early in the second half. By the time he called the second one, the Crimson Tide were up 17 points.
It was pretty much all downhill from there.
Andrew Carr led the Cats with 18 points despite picking up three fouls in the first half. Amari Williams had 16 points, seven rebounds and four assists. Perry was next with 11 points.
It was, by all accounts, an all-systems failure for Kentucky, which will now have to wait for Selection Sunday to see where its next game will be.
“We didn’t come this far just to come this far,” Carr said. “We’re going to look in the mirror and try to continue to get better and focus on the NCAA Tournament.”
Pope made it clear that he hopes that collective look in the mirror is a long one. He doesn’t want his team to simply erase this loss from their memories and move on.
“I hope it’s really hard,” he said of that process. “Because this is not OK 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.”
Kentucky guard Travis Perry (11) reaches for a loose ball as Alabama forward Aiden Sherrell (22) picks it up during Friday’s SEC Tournament game at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee. Ryan C. Hermens [email protected]
Oats, who has been complimentary of Pope since he got the UK job — and often goes out of his way to praise the Kentucky basketball program itself — didn’t gloat over becoming just the third coach to beat UK three times in a season. (Don DeVoe and Billy Donovan were the others.)
“This Kentucky team — they’ve got a lot of injuries,” Oats said. “They’re not to full strength. We know that.”
And if there’s any silver lining for Kentucky, it’s that things on that end didn’t sound nearly as bad Friday night as they did in the wee hours of the morning. After Butler left the win over Oklahoma with that injury to his left shoulder, the Wildcats left Bridgestone Arena fearing the worst. They got some good news after a night’s rest.
“A totally different, unique injury. The imaging was perfect,” Pope said of the tests done on Butler’s shoulder. “So we’re hopeful that he’ll be back in action.”
For Kentucky, that would be much better than the alternative. What happened on the court Friday night was another reminder of what life without Butler can look like.
This story was originally published March 15, 2025 at 2:14 AM.
