Otega Oweh showed improvement in his leadership against NC Central

Kentucky has struggled lately, finding themselves in a very rough spot already this season. As they now sit at 6-4, all of their wins have came against teams ranked in the bottom half of D1, while all losses have come against more competitive, top 25-ranked teams. But it isn't just that they've lost them, it's how. They've struggled to respond when a team answers early, and have shown no resilience or fight once they're down a big deficit.

That's why the fans have been upset, because they want their team to take ownership and show pride for not just the program, but the players themselves, which they haven't been doing. Well, Tuesday night's blowout win could be a step in the right direction as even though they got a convincing win, it still featured some defensive effort lapses, that if it wasn't for the offensive firepower, it would have been a closer game. Mark Pope seemed fed up with his players, and he even broke a clipboard after a lazy defensive play by one Kentucky player in particular before benching him the rest of the game. That's a side of Pope that we haven't seen on-court, and it looked as though their lapses in effort on Tuesday was the boiling point. He was mad, and he was after the game, too.

The coach can express all of the frustration he wants and send messages to his players as much as he desires, but ultimately, it's up to his players to react to that the right way. One player did that on Tuesday, and not just any player, Otega Oweh, who came into this season as the Preseason SEC Player of the Year favorite, but hasn't lived up anywhere close to that hype. Oweh has gotten bashed by national media for his poor effort and bad body language, especially in the Gonzaga game, but his effort Tuesday is a good start to turning things around, and Mark Pope was happy to see the effort he gave.

"I thought he was great, really," Pope said of Oweh on Tuesday. "One of the things good things we saw coming out of the first half is he had (Gage) Lattimore 1 for 10 (shooting). He was pretty much solely responsible for that and it was a guy who averaged 20 points a game and a good player and (they) run a lot of action for him. And Otega kinda took that on and said, 'Hey, I'm going to make sure we handle this.' I think he’s really trying to rally the guys. He’s trying to show some leadership. He played well on both ends of the ball tonight. Otega is really important for us and he’s carrying a big load. And he’s got to. That’s what you do and that’s your job and he’s going to continue to grow in that and we need him to be great moving forward."

Oweh put up a season-high 21 points, as well as a season high in rebounds with seven. It takes effort to score, and he showed it all game, but where it really takes effort is crashing the glass, and he showed it there, too. The 6-5 guard knows this team has to keep their confidence up. "We’ve just all got to continue to pump confidence into each other, regardless of the outcome," Oweh said after Tuesday's win.

The result was important, but it was more important to see how the players reacted to when things didn't look the best on Tuesday with those defensive lapses, and having you're star player step up and show leadership is a good step forward in order to get things on track. That comment from Oweh is great to hear. We'll see how this team responds in a pivital game against Indiana in Rupp Arena on Saturday. They'll need Oweh to show that same mindset he showed on Tuesday.