Kentucky outlasts Texas A&M, picking up ranked win over Aggies
By Andrew Olson
Published:
Kentucky picked up a key SEC win on Tuesday night. The No. 8 Wildcats defeated the No. 11 Aggies 81-69 in Lexington.
UK and TAMU played a tight game early. A&M, down Wade Taylor IV, led for over 10 minutes in the SEC clash. The last time the Aggies were in front was 32-31 with 52 seconds left in the 1st half. Kentucky pulled ahead for a 35-32 lead at the break and never looked back.
Mark Pope’s team managed to outpace Buzz Williams’ squad, but Texas A&M never went away. In fact, the Aggies had the 2 high scorers of the 2nd half, with Pharrell Payne scoring 13 and Zhuric Phelps adding 10 points. Phelps finished as A&M’s top scorer with 21 points, while Payne had 15 in the game.
Two double-digit scorers in the 2nd half, however, were not enough to overcome a balanced effort from Kentucky.
Otega Oweh led UK’s 2nd-half effort with all 11 of his points in the game. The Wildcats got 2nd-half points from all participants except Ansley Almonor. UK finished out 5-of-5 for the 12-point win.
For the game, Kentucky’s Jaxson Robinson was the leading scorer with 22 points on 8-of-17 shooting from the field, including 5-of-13 from 3-point range. Andrew Carr joined Robinson and Oweh in double figures with 13 points.
Kentucky improves to 14-3 overall with a 3-1 mark in conference play. Texas A&M is now 13-4 and 2-2 against SEC teams.
Andrew writes about sports to fund his love of live music and collection of concert posters. He strongly endorses the Hall of Fame campaign of Fred Taylor.
