By Jamie H. Vaught
After missing two games due to an ankle injury, Kentucky point guard Lamont Butler was flawless with his field goal shooting as the Wildcats defeated rival Louisville 93-85 Saturday night before a packed crowd of 21,093 at Rupp Arena.
The 6-foot-2 Butler, who played in the 2023 Final Four while at San Diego State, took the game scoring honors with a career-high 33 points, hitting all 10 of his baskets, including six three-pointers. He even had six assists. As for his free-throw shooting, he struggled, making only 7 of 12 shots from the line.
Interestingly, Butler played more minutes (32) than other Wildcat player despite his recent injury. Even on the day before the showdown, UK coach Mark Pope wasn’t even sure the graduate student would play against U of L. The coach had made the comment before Friday’s team practice.
According to ESPN Stats and Info, Butler became the second SEC player in the last 20 years to finish with 30-plus points on 100 percent field goal shooting. He also was named the game’s MVP by the Bluegrass Sports Commission (BSC). This annual award was selected by a committee of the BSC Board of Directors.
Pope said, “Lamont Butler just gave us one of the all-time greatest performances in the history of this super special game. The numbers back it up.”
Added U of L coach Pat Kelsey, “Lamont Butler was magnificent. I still see that kid in my nightmares because we played against them when I was the head coach at College of Charleston and he was the point guard at San Diego State. We played an epic battle in the first round (of the 2023 NCAA Tournament) and he is just a warrior and a winner.
“He has been out the past couple games. People were talking about if he was going to play or not and I thought that cat was playing in this game. You can mark that one down. He is a stone-cold killer and a really, really good player. He's obviously a good shooter but he is more of an attacking downhill driver.”
Butler thanked his basketball team trainer for getting him ready to play.
“I was trying to get out there man,” Butler said. “I did a lot of treatment with our trainer Brandon Wells. I did everything to get back healthy. I wanted to be out there the last two games as well but I just wasn’t ready. This was the game I was ready to show out.”
Otega Oweh, who made several critical plays and points down the stretch, hit 17 points for the Wildcats. He has scored double figures in every game this season.
“One of the great things about O is he is just in the moment,” said Pope. “I think he's got a pretty great capacity of just being dialed into the moment and not spending a lot of time worrying about the consequences of what might happen or what just did happen. He's pretty good at being present, he's actually really good at it.”
Overall, Kentucky, which led 46-40 at the intermission, displayed an outstanding shooting performance, making 58.2 percent (as opposed to Louisville's 44.3 percent). The Wildcats also outrebounded the Cardinals 41-31. UK had 23 assists compared to U of L’s eight.
UK is now 10-1 for the season, while U of L dropped to 6-5, including four setbacks to nationally-ranked teams. (The Cardinals beat then-No. 14 Indiana 89-61.)
Leading the Cardinals was guard Chucky Hepburn who scored a team-high 26 points. Terrence Edwards added 23 points. One of Pope’s former players at Brigham Young, 6-foot-11 Noah Waterman had 12 points for U of L.
The Wildcats, who have semester exams this coming week, will face Ohio State in the CBS Sports Classic Saturday evening in New York City. The 5:30 pm ET contest in Madison Square Garden will be shown on CBS. Louisville, meanwhile, plays at Florida State Saturday.
Jamie H. Vaught, a longtime sports columnist in Kentucky, is the author of six books about UK basketball, including recently-published “Forever Crazy About The Cats: An Improbable Journey of a Kentucky Sportswriter Overcoming Adversity.” Now a retired college professor who taught at Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College in Middlesboro., he is the editor and founder of KySportsStyle.com Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter @KySportsStyle or reach him via email at KySportsStyle@gmail.com.
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