Kentucky's season ends with lopsided NCAA Tournament loss to rival Tennessee

Ben Roberts, Lexington Herald-Leader on Mar 28, 2025

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INDIANAPOLIS — The first Kentucky basketball season of the Mark Pope era is finished.

The Wildcats fell in a double-digit hole early and couldn’t escape Friday night in Lucas Oil Stadium, ultimately losing to the Tennessee Volunteers, 78-65, in the Sweet 16 round of the NCAA Tournament.

The Cats found themselves down 10 points before the second TV timeout of the first half and never made it a one-possession game after that. They trailed by 15 at halftime and struggled throughout the night against the physicality of the Volunteers, who dominated the rebounding battle and hounded Kentucky’s ball handlers from the beginning.

UK point guard Lamont Butler narrowed Tennessee’s lead to 60-48 on a 3-pointer with a little more than nine minutes left. But Felix Okpara’s put-back dunk, Chaz Lanier’s steal and Zakai Zeigler’s 3-pointer produced five UT points in a matter of five seconds, and the Vols’ lead was back up to 17 points.

That forced a timeout from Pope, and the Cats never seriously threatened after that.

The 65 points scored by the Cats tied their lowest total of the season. This was just the sixth game this season in which UK failed to score at least 75 points. The Cats entered the game at No. 6 nationally with 85.0 points per game.

Tennessee won the rebounding battle 34-24. The Vols had 14 offensive rebounds to just seven for the Cats, and they outscored Kentucky 19-5 in second-chance points.

Butler was UK’s leading scorer with 18 points. Amari Williams added 14 points, with Otega Oweh scoring 13.

Kentucky came out playing smothering defense early on, but it didn’t translate to a lead on the scoreboard. And it didn’t last as the game got going.

The Wildcats forced Tennessee into several bad looks in the opening minutes, with the Vols missing their first shot in seven of their first eight possessions of the game. Even so, Tennessee was able to grab offensive rebounds and manage enough second-chance points to control the contest from the beginning.

Helping the Vols’ cause was their own defense, which has been one of the best in the country all season long.

Kentucky struggled mightily to get good shots and missed six of its first eight attempts from the field. The only two makes in that stretch were contested 3-pointers from Koby Brea and Butler.

Once the game opened up a bit, Tennessee took control. The Vols led by as many as 19 points in the first half, and Butler picked up his second foul of the game with more than 12 minutes still remaining in the period.

Over the final 11 minutes of the first half, Tennessee made 10 of 15 shots. UK missed seven straight shots at one point during that stretch, and the Vols led 43-28 at halftime.

To open the second half, Tennessee’s defense forced UK into a shot-clock violation on its first possession, and the Wildcats never got within 12 points from there.

This was the 242nd all-time meeting between the Kentucky and Tennessee men’s basketball teams but the first to take place in the NCAA Tournament. The Wildcats swept the regular-season series with the Volunteers, pulling a major upset as double-digit underdogs in Knoxville — a 78-73 win there on Jan. 28 — before beating Tennessee, 75-64, in Rupp Arena two weeks later, again as underdogs.

Kentucky was a 4.5-point underdog by tipoff Friday night, but the Cats couldn’t pull a third upset.

This was also Kentucky’s first game in a football stadium since the program’s loss to Wisconsin in the same building in the 2015 Final Four. The Cats took a 38-0 record into that one.

Pope’s first season as UK’s head coach ended with a 24-12 record, but the Wildcats did advance past the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2019. The coach Pope replaced, John Calipari, also guided the Arkansas Razorbacks to the Sweet 16 this season. Arkansas’ season ended with a loss to Texas Tech on Thursday night.

Tennessee (30-7) will advance to the Elite Eight for the second consecutive season and just the third time in program history. The Volunteers have never made the Final Four.