Kentucky overpowered Texas by beating the Longhorns at their own game

Coming into Wednesday night, no team in all of Division I men’s college basketball got to the free-throw line more consistently than the Texas Longhorns, ranking first nationally in free-throw rate. But Kentucky beat them at their own game en route to an 85-80 victory.

When the clock hit all zeros and the final buzzer went off throughout Rupp Arena, Kentucky had racked up 35 free-throw attempts for the game — second-most all season, trailing only UK’s 38 attempts in the win over Indiana back in December. But unlike that matchup with the Hoosiers, where the ‘Cats made just 25 of those shots, Kentucky was knocking down these freebies with more consistency, nailing a season-high 30 of them from the stripe. That 85.7 percent clip ended up playing a massive role in the Wildcats sneaking out a fourth straight SEC win.

“It’s hard to win an SEC road game when the home team is 30 for 35 from the line,” Texas head coach Sean Miller said postgame. “I’m not messing around on the officiating. The officiating was fine. It was called the right way.”

On the other side of the floor, Texas was even more efficient from the line, but failed to get there as often as Kentucky. The Longhorns shot 18-20 (90 percent) from the free-throw line, which was well below their season average of 28.6 attempts per game from that spot. UK even put Texas in the bonus with eight minutes left in the first half, but did a good job of preventing the Longhorns from taking advantage of that going into the halftime break. Seven-footer Matas Vokietaitis, who shoots 8.8 free throws per game this season for Texas, went just 5-6 against UK.

Kentucky needed all 35 of those free-throw attempts to win this game, too. Clinging to a tight lead down the stretch, the ‘Cats failed to make a field goal in the final 5:48 of game time. After Collin Chandler put down a fastbreak dunk to make it an 11-point edge, UK went 9-12 at the stripe the rest of the way to keep Texas just far enough away from completing the comeback. Denzel Aberdeen was especially effective at getting to the line after halftime by probing in the lane and waiting for his opportunity to strike. He scored all nine of his second-half points from the stripe.

“Thought that was a really important part of this game. It was patience,” Mark Pope said of Kentucky’s free-throw shooting. “Sometimes you get to the free throw line because you’re belligerent driving, putting your head down, and you end up with a really poor two-point field goal percentage. It didn’t feel like that. The game didn’t feel like that today. It felt like we were earning fouls because of our patience and our attack.”

In total, six different Kentucky players stepped up to the foul line throughout the Texas win. To Pope’s point, his team hit 50 percent of their two-pointers, too. Keep in mind that, for the season, UK averages just 21.8 free-throw attempts per contest. This was as impressive a showing from the line as we’ve seen from this group of ‘Cats yet.

• Denzel Aberdeen: 9-12 FT
• Collin Chandler: 6-6 FT (career-highs in makes and attempts)
• Mo Dioubate: 5-6 FT
• Malachi Moreno: 4-5 FT
• Kam Williams: 4-4 FT
• Otega Oweh: 2-2 FT
• TOTAL: 30-35 FT

Texas also came into this game as one of the nation’s top offensive rebounding teams. Kentucky didn’t overwhelm the Longhorns in that category, but did snag two more rebounds in total (36-34) while grabbing the same amount of offensive boards (13-13). The ‘Cats looked at their opponent’s strengths and found a way to use those against them. The result was another conference victory.

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