BUFFALO, N.Y. (WDRB) — March had already written the ending.
Allen Graves, right wing, 2.4 seconds, a shot so pure it felt like a period at the end of a sentence. Kentucky’s season, for all practical purposes, was finished.
And then Otega Oweh refused to read it.
The ball left his hands from somewhere near halfcourt, kissed the glass like it knew the address all along, and dropped through the rim as if it had been invited.
And for a moment that lasted less than two seconds and will live somewhere closer to forever, nothing else in the building mattered.
Kentucky 89, Santa Clara 84, in overtime. What we’ll remember is the end of regulation.
No timeout. No hesitation. No mourning period.
“They scrambled,” Kentucky coach Mark Pope said later. “Otega raced down the floor… and as he raised up, he said, ‘That’s a bucket.’”
There are players who predict shots, and there are players who announce them.
Oweh, apparently, files paperwork.
He didn’t call bank. He didn’t call anything, really. Just got it up and watched it go.
“It’s March,” he said. “I feel like that’s just what happens.”
Because Kentucky, battered and uneven and occasionally exasperating Kentucky, has spent all season practicing for exactly this kind of moment.
“We’ve been through a lot,” Brandon Garrison said. “It was like second nature to us.”
That might be the most remarkable part of this whole ridiculous evening. Not the shot — though the shot will get the posters and the replays and the place in the family stories. But the response.
No panic. No pause. No hands on heads.
Just the next play.
Pope has preached it all season — a “next-play mentality” — and on a night when the season teetered on the edge of extinction, his team treated chaos like routine.
Santa Clara hit a dagger. Kentucky answered with a miracle. And then there was still basketball to be played.
Overtime didn’t feel like a bonus. It felt like a test.
And that’s where Kentucky won the game.
Garrison, who has spent parts of this season wrestling with expectation and confidence, decided he’d had enough of watching Santa Clara’s guards dance into open space. He called for the switch — one through five — and then went out and proved it wasn’t bravado.
Six blocks. Two of them late. One that turned into a breakaway dunk that sounded like a door slamming.
“When BG plays good, we win,” Pope said.
On this night, Garrison didn’t just play good. He played like a man who had been waiting all season for the moment to match the belief.
And Oweh? He just kept going.
Thirty-five points. Eight rebounds. Seven assists. And 28 of those points coming in the final 25 minutes, as if he had simply decided that the game would bend to him eventually.
Sometimes, Pope said, “Otega sneaks up on you.”
That’s a bit like saying a thunderstorm sneaks up on you. You may not notice it at first. But eventually, you’re standing in the rain.
Santa Clara deserved better than this ending. The Broncos played with poise, shot-making and enough nerve to win the game twice — once with Graves’ three, and again when they thought time would grant them a breath.
Coach Herb Sendek called timeout. He’s sure of it. The officials didn’t see it. The moment moved on without permission.
And for Kentucky, it is survival.
Somewhere in all of it, there is that image: A ball in the air. A season hanging with it. A player who refused to let it end.
“We didn’t want the season to end yet,” Oweh said.
So it didn’t.
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