Kentucky suffered its worst loss of the 2025-26 men’s basketball campaign, falling 94-59 to Gonzaga on Friday at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee. The No. 18 Wildcats started flat and fell behind by 23 in the first half. They never recovered and suffered their fourth loss in nine games this season.
Fans have taken note of Kentucky’s apparent collapse, and some of them made a big deal of an unfortunate sequence involving guards Denzel Aberdeen and Otega Oweh.
Fans Were Not Happy After the Otega Oweh-Denzel Aberdeen Moment
Mark Pope’s players were listless and couldn’t execute effectively. They shot just 16-of-60 from the field. One play showed how out of sync Kentucky was when Aberdeen failed to get a pass to Oweh. Instead of moving on from the play, Oweh stood in the corner for a long time and gestured to take a shot.
The moment when Oweh apparently taunted Aberdeen for holding the ball too long was one of the instances that showed Kentucky was not playing in sync that day. Fans reacted to the miscue. Most blamed the Oklahoma transfer for a lack of leadership and selfishness.
One of the fans felt Oweh was focused on boosting his draft stock, saying: “Unfortunately Oweh only cares about his draft stock, he doesn’t care if we win or lose. Funny thing is he’s not getting drafted if he continues to play bad.”
Another college basketball enthusiast echoed the sentiment about the 6’4″Â guard, citing his lack of leadership. A fan directly blamed Oweh for breaking the team apart with his shoot-first attitude.
“I think Oweh is the biggest problem he doesn’t play hard all the time and has zero leadership qualities,” the user wrote.
“This team is broken on the inside, and it starts with Oweh,” another fan added.
Meanwhile, a college basketball enthusiast took a different view, blaming Florida transfer Aberdeen for not being a suitable fit for the team.
“Aberdeen seems to be the biggest problem. He’s just not a fit here,” he said.
Another fan had a different take on the issue; he pinned the blame on Pope, who apparently knew the issue and so far remained clueless on how to resolve it.
“This team really doesn’t like each other. We know it. Pope knows it,” the fan opined.
MORE: Jalen Rose Breaks Down the Real Problem Mark Pope’s Kentucky Is Struggling With
Oweh led Kentucky in scoring, finishing with 16 points, but his teammates were missing their attempts thanks to Gonzaga’s physical defense that compounded their shooting woes in the game.
All of the Wildcats’ defeats were against ranked opponents, and their lackluster performances against these teams could boot them out of the Top 25 in the next poll.
Mark Pope will try to bounce back from two straight defeats to North Carolina and Gonzaga when it takes on North Carolina Central on December 9 at Rupp Arena in Lexington, Kentucky.
