Kentucky got its first major win of the season against No. 6 Duke in the Champions Classic, marking Mark Pope’s first signature victory as head coach of the Wildcats. One of the players who showed a great performance in the victory was Lamont Butler, who, together with Otega Oweh, contributed to the victory with free throws in the last minutes.

Mark Pope knows how important Butler is to the Kentucky team, and he raises the bar for Kentucky when he’s on the court. Pope even called the veteran guard the “foundation” of the Kentucky team. Not only that, the team knows they have to overcome everything to be successful.

“Lamont (Butler) is the foundation of this team. If you know Lamont Butler, it’s like he’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. That’s not an exaggeration at all. He’s a winner. We just talked about it. So, we go or die together, man . I feel the same about Otega (Oweh), we are our guys, we will not move away from each other, we will play a bad game, we need a lot in the second. “He showed an incredible performance in the second half and really gave us a lot of momentum in the second half.”

– Lamont Butler and the Pope on unity.

Butler, as always, was pretty nice, even on the stat sheet, and contributed in many different ways. He finished the match with 9 points with 3-7 overall, 1-3 from three-point range, 4 assists and 3 rebounds. He didn’t get a steal or a block, but backcourt teammate Otega Oweh did add a block and 2 steals to his stat line.

Kentucky battled back and showed great poise and toughness to get the win, and Lamont Butler had some big plays to help make it happen.