Koby Brea made a young Tennessee fan’s night after roasting his team on the floor

Kentucky needed Koby Brea to win tonight. With Lamont Butler out and Andrew Carr limited, the graduate sharpshooter got his second start of the season and got Kentucky off to a hot start, hitting a three less than a minute in, one of four straight for the Cats. He finished with a team-high 18 points on a perfect 5-5 from the floor, including three three-pointers, and a 5-7 mark from the free-throw line.

Tonight was Brea’s best game since the win over No. 6 Florida on Jan. 4, when he hit seven threes en route to 23 points. Since then, he’s been in a bit of a slump, going 7-26 (26.9%) from three over five games. Brea scored 13 second-half points to help push the Cats to the massive 78-73 victory. His three with 5:20 left was Kentucky’s final field goal of the game, another remarkable fact about tonight’s improbable win.

Kentucky is 10-1 in games in which Brea scores at least 10 points. They’re 5-4 in the games in which he doesn’t hit double figures. After the game, Mark Pope said he spent “zero seconds” worrying about Brea’s slump because “great shooters shoot and make shots.” Tonight, Brea proved him right.

“I think he’s arguably the best shooter in all of basketball in a lot of different aspects. And, my gosh, he made hard shots tonight. I mean, he’s 3-3 [from three], and they were, like, three 10.7s. Like, they were unbelievable.”

Mark Pope’s favorite Koby Brea play of the night

Defense isn’t Brea’s strong suit, but Pope was impressed by Brea’s physical play and hustle on that end of the court.

“I thought he really gave us some life on the defensive end,” Pope said. “You know my favorite play from Koby tonight was they kind of got to a roast in the post — actually, I can’t remember if it ended up being an ISO or a roast — and he was really physical, got his hands on the ball and went up to block it, and got called for a foul — and it was a foul.

“And then seeing his emotional release after that play. You know, when you’re watching the game, you’re trying to see if the energy in the gym is right. And, man, he was really special, making heroic shots, but also with the energy that he brought to the game, I thought was contagious.”

Brea spoke with Goose Givens after the game and said Kentucky relished the challenge of playing another top-ten team on the road after losing back-to-back wins. I don’t think it’s a step too far to extend that to the criticism he’s taken in recent games.

“I think it’s always super big when you can come into somebody else’s home and take a win from them,” Brea said. “We knew that it was going to be a tough game. They’re a great team, a really physical team. But you know, we rely on the work that we put in. We stay true to ourselves no matter what we go through. We keep our heads up. We had come off of two losses, which we haven’t really had throughout the season, you know, back to back, but we keep fighting. Man, that’s what Kentucky is about.”