Kentucky got its 'big bully' back in Mo Dioubate -- and his intensity was contagious

Kentucky‘s heart was fairly questioned during the Wildcats’ embarrassing loss to Gonzaga in Nashville — knowing that, even with this team’s ongoing struggles, they’re not 35 points worse than the Bulldogs. Especially not with a crowd of essentially all UK fans filling Bridgestone Arena trying to will them to victory.

DeMarcus Cousins blamed the heart and Mark Pope confirmed that.

“If you’re watching that game, you feel like, starting with the coach, this product is completely unacceptable. Unacceptable,” Pope said at the time. “I think that, as a former player here, I’m pissed at the coach too. That’s just all deserved.”

A week later, Kentucky still stunk up the joint offensively, shooting just 38 percent overall, 20 percent from three and 66 percent at the line. Pope joked “we are not a thing of beauty right now” on that end of the floor, but the Wildcats still managed to defeat Indiana by 12 to finally put a notch in the win column against name-brand competition.

A big reason for that result? UK got its bully back in Mo Dioubate.

The Alabama transfer finished with a team-high 14 points on 4-7 shooting with 12 rebounds, five steals and zero turnovers in 22 minutes. His impact, though, extended far beyond the box score, coming up big in key moments and flipping the game on its head with his effort and intensity. There was nothing the Hoosiers could do to slow him down as a relentless finisher and rebounder, leading the charge on the Wildcats going from down eight with 16:16 to go to winning by a dozen.

He missed five games with a high-ankle sprain, and goodness, his presence sure was felt upon his return.

“Mo is a big bully, man. We need a big bully on our team,” Jaland Lowe said of Dioubate’s standout performance. “He’s tremendous for what we preach every single day and how we want to play, and it greatly showed tonight with him — you know, offensive rebounds, defensive (rebounds), five steals.

“Everything in between those lines, Mo does at a very high level. He prides himself on that every day, so that feeds off onto everybody else.”

It’s not that Dioubate is a one-man wrecking crew, necessarily — although he had a few spurts against IU where it felt that way. It’s more about how contagious that passion is and the way it inspires others to make winning plays.

Lowe was right there catching the fever, showing off some real emotion for the first time as a Wildcat following his own big plays.

“It fed off to me,” he said. “I wanted to play even harder defense, I wanted to get a couple rebounds in there just because he was fighting in there.”

It brought the best out of Brandon Garrison, too, who hasn’t been the emotional energy guy we saw in key moments last season for the Wildcats — remember Louisville and Oklahoma? He was all over the floor and filling the stat sheet, too.

Dioubate is a catalyst for all of that.

“It spread off to BG — BG was fighting, guarding multiple positions, doing everything he could to be there for us,” Lowe continued. “It just spread all throughout the team no matter who came in at what time. It set the tone for everybody.”

“We both played really hard — like, we fed off each other’s energy,” Dioubate said of Garrison. “He fed off my steals and my rebounds, I fed off his dunk. He was aggressive. The aggression he had today, it’s probably the most aggressive game I’ve seen him play so far in my life. 

“We talk like, ‘Yo, this is the game, bro. This is the game where all the talking and all the antics is gonna stop.’ We complement each other very well.”

Mark Pope said Monday night that one play stood out during the staff’s postgame autopsy, Dioubate taking on five Hoosiers to snatch an offensive rebound off a Lowe miss, followed by a tough putback. It was Oscar Tshiebwe-level want-to that we just haven’t seen much of this year.

It was so good he wants to set up an NIL deal with the popular burger joint, Five Guys, using the 1 vs. 5 screenshot on something.

Mo Dioubate. pic.twitter.com/hAoQZaRc3g

— Jack Pilgrim (@JackPilgrimKSR) December 14, 2025

“It was an unbelievable, unbelievable, just competitive play by Mo Dioubate,” Pope said. “You think about it — he rolls in this game and has five steals and 12 rebounds and just dominated the glass single-handed. He had a couple where — he had an offensive rebound in the first half where he just kind of slid around underneath, had no chance, yet he just willed his way to grab an offensive rebound. He was great for us all night long, but that’s the type of player that he is.

“He had a massive impact on the game in a lot of different ways.”

But that’s why you recruit and invest in a kid like that the way Pope and Kentucky did. Dioubate knew days like that were coming the minute he committed to the Wildcats.

It’s just what he does.

“I always had that to my game, just bringing energy no matter where I played. I always had that spark to me. Once I committed here, I knew that was one of the things I was gonna be bringing to this thing, the energy,” Dioubate said. “I just try to make it contagious — like as you saw today, it was very contagious, to where everyone started playing to that standard.

“We’re just gonna keep doing that moving forward.”

Kentucky could use more of that on Saturday when the Wildcats take on Rick Pitino and St. John’s down in Atlanta.