Collin Chandler -- despite scoring just two points -- was Mark Pope's MVP

He only scored two points on 1-3 shooting in a 13-point win, so why was Collin Chandler the game MVP against No. 1 Purdue, according to Mark Pope? The sophomore guard did everything else to help Kentucky knock off the best team in the country — so the AP voters say — making plays on both ends of the floor.

Chandler finished with five rebounds, three assists, one steal and just one turnover in his 15 minutes on the floor, along with the biggest dunk of the game, barrelling down the lane and rising for a double-pump slam to cave the Rupp Arena roof in.

“He was the highlight of the whole game for me. I would give him the MVP of the game,” Pope said of the 6-5 guard. “That’s the defining feature of who — if this team wants to do something historic, that’s what we need. We need to champion it, we need to take pride in it. We need him to be like, ‘Yes, that was me.’ He was unbelievable.”

In those 15 minutes, he led the team in plus/minus as a plus-15. The dunk was impressive, obviously, but he set the tone with energy and intensity as a decision-maker and defender to let everything else fall into place the way it did.

As Pope sees it, the rest of the Wildcats don’t eat the way they did if Chandler didn’t step up in a two-point effort.

“He played 15 minutes and he was a plus-15, I think. He was a plus-one per minute — that’s a ridiculous ratio for anything over six or seven minutes of play,” he said. “He had a ridiculously spectacular dunk, but I have so much confidence in him to make the right decision on offense and so much confidence in him to be incredibly defensively sound and play with great energy.

“You have guys like that and it makes you feel good as a coach because good things are gonna happen when he’s on the floor.”

Kentucky was up eight at halftime, but there was frustration in the locker room about bigs not rolling to the basket when opportunities were there inside. Chandler was the first domino to fall, then others followed, allowing Mo Dioubate, Malachi Moreno and Brandon Garrison to combine for 23 points on 11-16 shooting with 17 rebounds.

Pope credits No. 5 for that success.

“The dunk was spectacular, but he had two elite-level wait in the corner full-speed cuts where he hit the roll late and just broke it open,” he said. “Our bigs finally started rolling — the whole first half, that was one of the things we were stuck on. We couldn’t get our bigs to roll, I think it was partly some fatigue and a head-spinning kind of deal.

“He really got us started, then everyone else saw how that felt, the roll guys and the live ball ball handlers. Then you have Mo making that play, then you got Jasper (Johnson) making that play, (Denzel Aberdeen) making that play. It was contagious.”

Don’t focus on the scoring — or any of the counting stats, really. Chandler made winning plays to earn game MVP honors.

“He had a massive impact on the game,” Pope said.