The last week has not been kind to Otega Oweh.
You’ve questioned his effort. Film has exposed his defensive lapses. His body language has been picked apart. He even admitted earlier this year that he needed to work on giving “100 percent,” a brutal sentence for a senior leader at Kentucky.
Against North Carolina Central, for the first time in a while, the picture finally matched what the box score said.
Most of the team joined Otega Oweh for his postgame interview on the SEC Network. Good to see, especially everyone cheering for Zach Tow's first field goal, a three. pic.twitter.com/A1Af7olZtM
— Tyler Thompson (@MrsTylerKSR) December 10, 2025
Oweh put up a monster line:
- 21 points on 9-of-12 shooting
- 3-of-4 from three
- 7 rebounds
- 4 steals and most importantly
- 0 turnovers
But it was what he did on the other end, and how he handled his matchup, that made Mark Pope light up.
“One of the only good things we saw coming out of the first half,” Pope said, “was he had [Gage] Lattimore at one-for-10, and he was pretty much solely responsible for that.”
Lattimore came in averaging around 20 a night and is the engine of NC Central’s offense. They run sets for him, use him to stretch defenses, and rely on him to keep them afloat.
Oweh basically erased him.
He fought through actions. He bothered catches. He took the assignment personally in a way we haven’t consistently seen this year, and Pope noticed.
“Otega kind of took that on and said, ‘Hey, I’m going to make sure that we handle this,’” Pope said.
Otega Oweh's leadership finally looked real instead of theoretical for Kentucky basketball
The scoreboard made it easy to miss, but there were moments where Oweh’s leadership actually showed up.
At one point, cameras caught him huddling the team, animated and intense. That’s exactly what Pope has been begging for, someone on the floor who isn’t just worried about his own touches.
“I think he’s really trying to rally the guys,” Pope said. “He’s trying to show some leadership. He played well on both ends of the ball tonight.”
Oweh has to carry a big load. Pope didn’t sugarcoat that.
“He’s really important for us,” he said. “He’s carrying a big load and he’s got to. That’s what you do. That’s your job. And he’s going to continue to grow into that. We need him to be great moving forward.”
The challenge now is obvious:
- This can’t be a one-night response to criticism against a poor team.
- This has to become the expectation no matter the opponent.
The same energy that put Lattimore on lock and had Oweh flying around the floor has to show up when the jersey across from him says Indiana, St. John’s or Tennessee.
Nobody’s forgetting the backdoor cuts he’s given up or the bad closeouts or the eye-rolls. But if this is the version of Oweh Kentucky gets more often than not, engaged defensively, efficient offensively, vocal with his teammates, a lot of other things suddenly get easier.
In a season where people have questioned this team’s heart, Oweh finally played like he wanted to answer that personally.
Now we find out if he meant it on Saturday.