MILWAUKEE — Lamont Butler doesn’t have much in common with most front men for Kentucky teams.
They’re top-10 recruits and future NBA lottery picks. He’s a 6-foot-2 guard who played four solid seasons for San Diego State before joining new Kentucky coach Mark Pope in Lexington. Butler didn’t rank among ESPN’s top 100 recruits in his class, a group that included six Kentucky prospects. He also is basically playing with one healthy arm, after injuring a shoulder in January and missing a total of six games.
“He tweaked his ankle in the first half, and so he’s balanced now; he’s got no shoulder and no ankle,” Pope said of Butler after playing Illinois on Sunday. “Courage is real, but I keep coming back to love, man. He loves his guys, and the guys love him.”
Butler is the face of a Kentucky team that advanced to the Sweet 16 with an 84-75 win against the Illini at Fiserv Forum. Kentucky survived the first weekend of the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2019 — and did so in Pope’s first season as coach.
Although the third-seeded Wildcats had the stronger seed, they were 2.5-point underdogs at ESPN BET against the sixth-seeded Illini, who had a significant crowd edge while playing less than an hour’s drive from the Illinois state line.
“We’ve got a lot of underdogs on this team, people who have been doubted throughout our life,” said Butler, who had 14 points on 4-for-5 shooting and added 5 assists and 3 steals in the win. “Growing up in basketball, not a lot of us were highly recruited and nothing like that.
“For us to be on this stage, we wanted to seize the opportunity and just be great out there.”
The Wildcats were great defensively in the first half, recording eight steals and flustering Illinois NBA draft prospects Kasparas Jakucionis and Will Riley.
They were great offensively in the second half, sinking 15 of their first 19 shots, as Koby Brea hit 6 of 8 attempts and scored 14 of his team-high 23 points.
Brea recorded the most points without a turnover by a Kentucky player since Tayshaun Prince had 41 points against Tulsa in the second round of the 2002 tournament.
Kentucky led for the final 46:16, preventing any sustained Illinois runs with plays such as Butler stealing the ball in the backcourt and feeding Amari Williams for a slam with 17:10 left. Illinois never had a scoring run of more than six points.
“It is in his soul from a deep, deep place, like, ‘I am going to rise up to the occasion for my team,'” Pope said of Butler. “I can’t remember if it was Amari or him that said it was love that helped these guys. It’s helped them manage all the chaos they’ve been through. But that’s a real thing. He loves his guys, and he wants to perform for his guys.”
Kentucky’s deepest tournament run in six years has come with a roster Pope called “in tatters” after Friday’s first-round win against Troy. Guards Jaxson Robinson (wrist) and Kerr Kriisa (foot) are lost for the season with injuries, and Butler had not been practicing at all before the postseason.
Pope described Butler as a player who focuses on making things happen rather than dwelling on what happens to him.
“Going into the game two days ago, it was a miracle that he was able to function the way he is, because you lose timing and rhythm and feel,” Pope said. “You just do. That’s why you practice.”
Kentucky’s Sweet 16 matchup in Indianapolis will be against a Tennessee opponent that the Wildcats beat twice during the regular season, including at Knoxville on Jan. 28.
“We have what it takes to do special things in March,” Brea said.
Illinois coach Brad Underwood suggested Kentucky will go “as far as Lamont wants to take them.”
“I think this was Lamont Butler’s 12th NCAA tournament game,” Underwood said. “I thought he controlled the ball on both sides and was extremely effective on the defensive side.”
The Volunteers likely will be favored in the Sweet 16, and some will wonder how long a limited Kentucky team can keep things rolling. Butler isn’t one of them.
“From day one, our focus was winning a national championship,” Butler said. “So any way possible, we are going to do that. The expectation here at Kentucky is to win. We’ve got a bunch of winners here, and we want to continue that tradition.”
