Tre Johnson and Tramon Mark combined for 32 points in a decisive second half for the Horns.
Despite missing senior forward Arthur Kaluma due to injury, a desperate Texas Longhorns team closed down the stretch to secure an 82-78 win over the No. 15 Kentucky Wildcats to push head coach Rodney Terry’s team onto a more favorable side of the NCAA Tournament bubble as freshman guard Tre Johnson scored a game-high 32 points and senior wing Tramon Mark added 26 points to account for more than 70 percent of the team’s points on Saturday at the Moody Center.
It wasn’t the most efficient performance by Johnson, who went 11-of-26 shooting, including a 1-of-8 effort from beyond the arc, but was aggressive creating contact to make nine free throws and hit the glass hard for nine rebounds, five of them offensively.
Mark also bounced from a string of poor performances to play at an extremely efficient level, going 9-of-14 shooting, hitting three of the team’s five threes, and adding two assists, two steals, and two blocks.
Of the final 23 points for the Longhorns over the final 7:27, Texas connected on 11 free throws, making up for a first-half disparity to secure a much-needed win after three straight losses and four defeats in the last five games. Johnson scored eight of those points in an impressive closing effort.
As the game started, Texas head coach Rodney Terry was forced to call a timeout at the 16:33 mark as Kentucky took a 9-3 lead on an open three by Travis Perry for a 7-0 run as the Horns went more than two minutes without scoring, missing a number of quality looks in a 1-of-7 shooting start. In fact, the ball hadn’t even gone through the basket for Texas because the score credited to Johnson was knocked off the rim by a Kentucky player.
After the timeout, the Longhorns responded with Mark hitting a floater and Johnson taking advantage of a mismatch for soft, driving layup to cut the deficit to three points at the first media timeout.
It was the start of a 6-of-9 stretch for Texas that included the team’s first made three by junior guard Jordan Pope more than eight minutes into the game, heading into under-12 timeout trailing 17-15 with a free throw for Kentucky pending on a potential three-point play.
The Wildcats couldn’t convert, but Mark did on the other end, scoring five straight points for the Longhorns to take the lead. Texas turned offense into defense to extend it as a steal by Pope led to a layup by senior forward Jayson Kent and Johnson jumped a passing lane to create a transition layup for himself, forcing Kentucky to call a timeout at the 8:45 mark with the Horns up 24-19.
A made basket by the Cats ended a stretch of five missed shots over two minutes to cut into the deficit at the third media timeout, but Kentucky bounced back to take a 33-32 lead on a Trent Noah three before the under-four break.
Johnson hit a step-back three, his first after missing his first four, and Mark made a tough, driving layup to stop a 10-2 run by the Wildcats, but Kentucky responded with the final four points of the first half to take a 41-37 lead into halftime.
Neither team shot well from three in the first half — Texas went 3-of-14 shooting (21.4 percent) and Kentucky was 3-of-13 shooting (23.1 percent) with the Horns holding a 9-2 edge in fast-break points the Wildcats made up for by hitting 8-of-11 free throws as the home team only attempted two, making both.
The three-point struggles for the Wildcats continued in the second half, hitting 3-of-11 shots from beyond the arc, and the Longhorns were able to defend the off-ball cuts by Kentucky well enough to limit the visitors to 41.9-percent shooting overall, including 37.9 percent in the second half.
Texas struggled to secure defensive rebounds after halftime, allowing Kentucky to come up with half of their 18 misses, but the Wildcats couldn’t convert enough of those opportunities with six second-chance points. For the game, Kentucky turned 18 offensive rebounds into 14 second-chance points.
A break in the conference schedule means that Texas doesn’t play again until next Saturday on the road against South Carolina against the last-place Gamecocks, winless in 12 conference games.