Nashville, Tenn.
The Kentucky Wildcats are headed home after two nights at the SEC Tournament.
Alabama defeated the Cats 99-70 on Friday night in Bridgestone Arena, completing a rare three-game season sweep of the UK men’s basketball team and ending the chances of Mark Pope’s team to bring a league trophy back to Lexington.
The loss was UK’s most lopsided defeat since Duke beat the Cats 118-84 in the 2018 Champions Classic.
Kentucky has not advanced to the SEC Tournament title game since 2018, when the Wildcats completed a four-peat in the event. UK’s 85-84 win over Oklahoma on Thursday was the program’s first victory in an SEC Tournament game in three years.
The Cats have made it beyond the quarterfinals of the tournament only once since 2019.
This year’s SEC Tournament semifinals will match Auburn with Tennessee and Alabama with Florida — all four of the top seeds in the bracket advancing to the weekend.
UK (22-11) will now wait for Selection Sunday, and the Cats entered the day widely considered to be a 3 seed in the NCAA Tournament field. The selection show will air at 6 p.m. EDT Sunday on CBS.
Kentucky did get a piece of good news earlier in the day, before its loss to Alabama.
Lamont Butler didn’t play in the game, but the worst fears over the status of UK’s starting point guard turned out to be unfounded. Butler, whose season appeared in jeopardy after hurting his left shoulder in the Wildcats’ win over Oklahoma the night before, received the “best possible news” regarding the injury, according to Pope, who implied his team leader would be back on the court in time for next week’s NCAA Tournament.
Butler has now missed nine games due to injury this season, and seven of those have come as a result of his left shoulder, which was originally hurt in a win over Texas A&M on Jan. 14. Kentucky is also playing without veteran guards Kerr Kriisa and Jaxson Robinson, who have been ruled out for the season due to injury, leaving the Cats with just nine available scholarship players Friday night.
Travis Perry started in Butler’s place, and the freshman guard hit a corner 3-pointer early in the game and ended up with 10 points at halftime. Perry had 11 for the game.
Kentucky guard Travis Perry (11) battles for the ball with Alabama guard Mark Sears (1) during Friday’s game at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee. Ryan C. Hermens [email protected]
The Cats struggled mightily from 3-point range, going 5-for-19 for the game and enduring a long-range drought of nearly 20 minutes. After Koby Brea hit a 3-pointer to narrow Bama’s lead to 23-19 with 10:08 left in the first half, the Cats missed seven in a row before Andrew Carr finally made another. By that time, Alabama had built a 20-point lead.
Carr dealt with foul trouble in the first half — he was called for three before halftime — but led Kentucky with 18 points. Amari Williams added 16 points, seven rebounds and four assists. Otega Oweh suffered an injury in the first half before returning to the game, but he had only eight points after his game-winning shot over Oklahoma the night before. Brea also finished with eight points.
A night after making their first five shots of the game, the Wildcats missed their first five attempts against the Crimson Tide, but Alabama didn’t build much of a lead amid UK’s early shooting woes.
Starting with Oweh’s driving dunk to give the Cats their first made basket, Kentucky ran off five consecutive makes. By the end of that flurry — which included 3-pointers from Brea and Perry — the score was tied at 14.
Alabama answered with a 9-0 run that ended with Labaron Philon catching Oweh in the face with an elbow as he drove to the rim for an and-one finish on a fast break. Oweh was called for a foul on that play, and he ended up on the court with blood dripping from his mouth.
Kentucky’s leading scorer then went to the UK locker room for medical treatment. In the meantime, the Cats went on a 7-0 run. Alabama led for the rest of the half, but Kentucky kept things relatively close with its top offensive threat sidelined.
Oweh spent nearly six minutes off the court before returning to the game with 5:40 left in the first half — and the Cats down 33-28 — and it remained a single-digit deficit until an unfortunate series for UK that included a goaltending call against Williams, a quick turnover by Williams, and then an and-one finish from Aiden Sherrell to put Bama ahead 47-36, the Tide’s first double-digit lead of the night.
That goaltending call was reversed after a video review at halftime, however, taking two points off the board for Alabama. The switch meant Bama never actually led by more than single digits, and the Tide took a 45-38 advantage into the break.
Alabama did end up taking its first double-digit lead on a 3-pointer by Philon to make it 52-42 less than two minutes into the second half. Philon followed that with another bucket to make it 54-42. After Carr answered with a jumper, Bama’s Mouhamed Dioubate hit a 3 to make it a 13-point lead and force Pope to call a timeout before the first TV break of the half.
Alabama’s advantage had ballooned to 69-52 before the second TV timeout of the half, and that led Pope to call another one. The Cats never got within 15 points of the Tide after that.
Philon, one of the top freshmen in the SEC this season, led Bama with 21 points.
Alabama is just the third team to beat Kentucky three times in the same season. The Tide defeated UK 102-97 in Rupp Arena on Jan. 18 and then beat the Wildcats 96-83 in Tuscaloosa on Feb. 22.
The only other opponents to get three victories over the Cats in the same season were Florida in 2013-14 (when UK ultimately went to the Final Four) and Tennessee in 1978-79, with both of those series sweeps ending in the SEC Tournament championship game.
This story was originally published March 15, 2025 at 12:05 AM.
