Otega Oweh tells Georgia its win in Athens was team's 'Super Bowl'

If you’ve heard it once you’ve heard it a thousand times: Kentucky is every team’s Super Bowl. Like every season and every true road game, the Wildcats experienced yet another t-shirt night in Athens, the football school pretending to care about basketball for a night with fans studying their own team’s players on flashcards while passing the time outside Stegeman Coliseum waiting hours to get in. It happened at Clemson, then it happened at Georgia, just as it will happen again at Mississippi State this weekend — and for the rest of time.

“Well it’s Kentucky, you know? It’s everyone’s Super Bowl,” Mark Pope said after the loss at Clemson. “This is our guys’ first experience here and it won’t ever get easier. This is why you come here, this is why you put on this jersey, so you can do that, you can be everybody’s Super Bowl. That’s an honor but it also requires us to be great and tonight we weren’t quite great enough.”

What’s it like to experience that as a player, especially coming from a school that used to host Super Bowls when high-profile programs came to town? It’s different, to say the least. And starting 0-2 in true road games this season, they know it’s just not good enough right now.

“We’ve been on the road a whole lot in my career, but nothing is like being Kentucky on the road,” Andrew Carr said after the loss at Georgia. “That comes as a privilege for us and something we gotta take seriously. And we haven’t really shown that yet on the road. We haven’t been our best on the road yet.”

The Bulldogs had a heck of a time Tuesday evening — and they deserved it. They came out and punched the Wildcats in the mouth and Pope’s group had no response. Kentucky got manhandled and outworked, inexcusable in a league this strong, particularly in 2024-25.

As the lead grew wider in the second half and the result became clear, Georgia got understandably chesty, shown yapping on camera talking trash to Kentucky players. At one point, Mount St. Mary’s transfer De’Shayne Montgomery told former McDonald’s All-American Brandon Garrison, “We’re beating y’all ass” with the Bulldogs up 75-62 with just 2:39 to go. Otega Oweh, taking free throws at the time, turned to Montgomery and told him to enjoy the biggest game they’ll play all year.

“This is y’all Super Bowl,” Oweh said.

Both sides fair in their assessment of the game — an ass-whooping by Georgia, but a loss Kentucky likely won’t even remember by year’s end. Bigger fish to fry for the Cats with 12 more Quad 1 opportunities to go and plenty to get fixed if they want to achieve their dreams of a Final Four. The Bulldogs, meanwhile, will bark at each other on all fours about this until Spring Football in a couple of months.

“This is, of course, our biggest win,” Mike White said. “… It’s a signature win for this team.”

Congrats to Georgia — hopefully you can get that confetti and champagne cleaned up before the next home game. Time for Kentucky to regroup and take care of business in Starkville this weekend.

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