Gonzaga rewind: Braeden Smith steps up, defense returns to form as Zags dismantle Kentucky

NASHVILLE – During the first half of Friday’s ESPN2 broadcast, commentators Karl Ravech and Jimmy Dykes took a brief pause to give viewers a sense of the hostility building among 18,507 fans at Bridgestone Arena, most of them dressed down in Kentucky blue.

It wasn’t enough to watch what was unfolding between No. 11 Gonzaga and No. 18 Kentucky off Broadway in downtown Nashville. You had to hear it.

After Gonzaga’s 94-59 victory, the Wildcats were loudly booed off the makeshift basketball court at the NHL venue that’s become a second home for Kentucky over the years. More like a broken home Friday evening.

Disgruntled Kentucky fans were hurling profanities at second-year coach Mark Pope before the second media timeout and calling for his job on some occasions. A program legend later called the team’s “heart” into question in a viral social media post.

Looking for a bounce-back game themselves, the Zags were the cause of Kentucky blues and boos in their third SEC win of the season – a Quad 1 result that vaulted them from No. 5 to 2 in the NCAA’s NET rankings.

We unpack how it all went down in our day-after rewind.

Smith steps up

Pundits and analysts who handicapped Friday’s game hypothesized a bench guard could have a pivotal role in the final outcome.

They were correct, but it probably wasn’t the player they expected.

After questions surrounding his availability earlier in the week, Pitt transfer Jaland Lowe, who’d missed five previous games with a shoulder injury, returned to the court for Kentucky. Lowe saw 14 minutes off UK’s bench but missed all five shots from the field while scoring one point and delivering one assist.

If Lowe was a non-factor for Kentucky, Braeden Smith was a major X-factor for Gonzaga.

The junior played key first-half minutes off Mark Few’s bench after replacing starter Mario Saint-Supery, who picked up two fouls inside the first six minutes. Smith finished with 11 points on 4 of 7 shooting and 1 of 2 from the 3-point line. He also recorded six assists, six rebounds and two steals for the Zags, who were plus-20 in his 11 minutes.

“He was terrific. I thought that was a huge, huge key,” Few said. “He kept in and we didn’t not only miss a beat, I think we started playing faster. Which he’s done a lot for us this year. But he really, really again shared the ball and got the ball to the right spots. Stepped up and hit shots when needed, which our guys have got to do.”

Smith dictated tempo, operated Gonzaga’s high-low offense effectively and was active on defense, recording two steals to bring his three-game total against Maryland, Michigan and Kentucky to eight.

The point guard’s minutes have been hard to predict since he was replaced by Saint-Supery in the starting lineup against Southern Utah. Smith played 14 minutes his first game off the bench but only eight against Alabama. He’s logged 17.3 minutes the last three games while averaging six assists over that stretch.

Smith and fellow guard Adam Miller were responsible for 22 of Gonzaga’s 32 bench points, complementing Graham Ike and Braden Huff, who guided the Zags with 48 combined points against Kentucky.

“I mean, these guys command a lot of attention and when they do command that attention and throw out, you’ve got to be ready, locked and loaded to make a play,” Few said. “(Smith) was really, really good tonight and a big key.”

Containing the Cats

The unpleasant flashbacks Kentucky fans experienced Friday started as early as the team’s first two possessions, which resulted in missed 3-pointers from Kam Williams and Collin Chandler.

In Tuesday’s loss to North Carolina, Pope’s team went 10 minutes, 25 seconds without a field goal in the second half, so anxiety started to return when the Wildcats missed their first 10 shots on Friday and turned the ball over on five other possessions.

Kentucky’s passes often went anywhere other than to someone else wearing a white jersey. Some skipped into the first row of the crowd, others fell right to Gonzaga and one deflected off a member of the officiating crew.

“Credit Gonzaga for responding great to their debacle a week ago,” Pope said. “I thought they were terrific tonight. They were terrific in the gap, they were terrific kind of in defensive rotations. For sure, they were terrific with their length.”

In many cases Kentucky’s offensive errors were of the unforced variety. Still, Gonzaga created a level of discomfort and disconnect that factored into the Wildcats scoring only 59 points – their lowest point total in 45 games under Mark Pope and lowest as a program since a 78-52 loss to Alabama on Jan. 7, 2023.

“The best thing we did, I think we really slowed them down as best we could in transition and I thought we did a great job early in that half of doing that,” Few said. “They’re great at really pitching ahead and attacking the rim. They’ve got some guys that can really put pressure on the rim, and I thought we did a great job there, we hit our coverages and we rebounded very, very well. And those are our three keys.”

Kentucky ranked No. 10 nationally averaging 20.12 fastbreak points per game. The Zags slowed the Wildcats to a crawl, limiting them to just 11 on Friday. Pope’s team also ranked No. 27 in assist-to-turnover ratio, at 1.74, but took a hit there after recording 12 assists and 11 turnovers against Gonzaga.

“I felt like we were really physical and we were really tentative,” Pope said. “That’s something we’ve got to figure out. Almost like we got ourselves in a space where we were a little paralyzed offensively. I don’t have a lot more than that right now. I felt like we struggled to get downhill, struggled to turn the corner, struggled to kind of be on our toes on the offensive end. It was surprising. We’ll figure that out.”

Tense times

If Kentucky was at an inflection point Tuesday after its North Carolina loss, Friday’s beatdown from Gonzaga may have qualified as a crisis point.

The result was bad enough, and that was before former Kentucky one-and-done center DeMarcus Cousins joined a growing audience of Wildcat critics by chiming in with a viral tweet late in the second half.

“Can’t lie…this uk team has no heart! This is hard to watch smh,” tweeted Cousins, a four-time NBA All-Star.

Pope, who won a national championship while playing for Kentucky in 1996, was asked about Cousins’ tweet during Friday’s postgame press conference. The second-year coach, who arrived in Lexington after five years at BYU – four of which were spent playing Gonzaga every year in the WCC – didn’t push back on the former player’s criticism, suggesting it was warranted.

“I have no issue with what he said, in the sense of you’re watching that game, you feel like starting with the coach, this problem is completely unacceptable,” Pope said. “So I think that as a former player, I’m (frustrated) with the coach too, and that’s just all deserved. There’s nothing inappropriate about what he said at all.”

Kentucky erased an 18-point deficit to beat Gonzaga in overtime, 90-89, last season in Seattle. At the time, it was one of Pope’s best results at the helm in Lexington, giving the Wildcats their second victory over a top-10 team and eventually helping them nab a No. 3 seed in the NCAA Tournament, where UK lost to Tennessee in the Sweet 16.

This season, the Wildcats (5-4) don’t have a nonconference win over a high-major opponent and have just two more opportunities, against Indiana and St. John’s.

“We’ve diminished a little into a bad spot right now and we have to dig ourselves out of it,” Pope said. “It’s going to be an internal group thing and we feel the responsibility we have to this university and the fanbase. All the boos we heard tonight were incredibly well deserved, mostly from me, and we have to fix it. That’s all we have. As you’re rolling through life, all you have is your response and our response so far has not been adequate.”

Barring any unforeseen circumstances, the six-game contract Gonzaga and Kentucky signed before the 2022-23 season guarantees two more games between the schools: in 2026-27 at Rupp Arena in Lexington and 2027-28 at McCarthey Athletic Center. The Zags own a 3-1 series lead against the Wildcats and are now plus-55 in four games after Friday’s win.