Mark Pope, Otega Oweh give thoughts on controversial ending to Kentucky vs. Auburn

The Kentucky Wildcats fell on the road to the Auburn Tigers in heartbreaking fashion. After starting the game well and taking a lead into halftime, a second-half collapse turned the game around. Kentucky was up by six with 10:22 left, but that's when things began to get interesting, as Auburn gained a lead and Kentucky climbed back late before a foul in the final seconds helped give the Tigers a win.

The play on the foul has been extremely controversial since it happened. Kentucky was getting ready to inbound the ball with 14 seconds left, but the refs called Collin Chandler for a "push-off," which gave Auburn one last offensive possession down by one point. Auburn then was able to take advantage with a tip-in layup with one second left that ultimately gave them the win as Kentucky could not get any kind of shot off with 1.4 seconds left.

After the game, Mark Pope and Otega Oweh spoke on the controversial foul call, one that has not just Kentucky fans in arms, but many across the college basketball world. In his press conference, Pope did not publicly criticize the officials about the call. "We don’t make excuses. We don’t do that," Pope said. "Regardless of how disgraceful things are, we don’t give away our power...regardless of how embarrassing, personal, awful, unacceptable."

But then, Pope was caught on speaking loudly to Kentucky AD Mitch Barnhart about the call, where he seemed to really be upset. Here is what he said, very briefly. "Mitch, if those MFers (the SEC) try to fine me, screw them. I didn’t say a word about how they cheated us.”

As for Otega Oweh, he seemed to let some of his true feelings out about the call, but he did slip in a little nigget that is very eye-opening when you think about the timing of that foul in the game, especially the magnitude of it. Here is what Oweh said about it: "It's really unfortunate because we were playing a certain way the whole game. The refs even said they was going to let us play just being physical, holding, playing through it. And I feel like a play like that, it was a slow-developing, like, he didn't even hold. He was just creating space. So it's a weird whistle. But like I said, even with that call, we still could have won."

Kentucky fans, players and coaches can say what they want, but there's ultimately just nothing you can do about it now. This will continue to be a hot topic, as it should be, because it really was a very interesting decision to make that call when it was called.