With nine seconds remaining, Mark Pope called a timeout. Down three to Missouri, the Cats had one final chance to tie the game and force overtime.

Coming out of the break, Otega Oweh passed the ball to Jaland Lowe. As the clock wound down to five seconds and with no other options available, Lowe hoisted a shot from beyond the arc.

The shot did not fall, and the Wildcats fell 73-68 to the Tigers, dropping their first SEC home opener since 2013.

“We drew up a little play call, trying to figure out what the best option was, and their defense kind of did something different than we were prepared for, so we just had to hoist up a shot,” Kam Williams said after the game.

Lowe, Oweh, Williams, Denzel Aberdeen and Brandon Garrison were on the floor for the final play.

All four were averaging a higher 3-point percentage than Lowe entering the game — and still were following the loss.

“We just tried to keep it as simple as we could and wanted to milk the same reject action we had, and we just didn’t,” Pope said of the final play. “Inexplicably, again, we had no pace running into it. We were a little frozen. We just didn’t execute it the way we wanted to.”

Despite the final score, Kentucky controlled the flow for much of the night, leading for 17:23 overall, while Missouri led for 15:59 and the teams tied for 6:37.

In the first half, Kentucky led for just 1:09, while Missouri controlled the lead for 13:29.

Similar to nearly every other game the Wildcats have played this season, Kentucky flipped the script after halftime, holding the lead for 16:14 and limiting Missouri to just 1:38.

Unfortunately for Kentucky, the short stretch it trailed came at the worst possible time.

Missouri retook the lead at the 9:30 mark, but Kentucky regained it two minutes later at 8:15, eventually building an eight-point advantage with 4:37 remaining.

The Tigers clawed back to within one at 1:14, then reclaimed the lead with 36 seconds left, and the Cats never recovered.

In the final 4:30, Missouri closed on a 15-2 run, including an 8-0 surge in the final 1:30, while Kentucky ended the game on a scoring drought of more than two minutes.

For Missouri head coach Dennis Gates, being down by multiple possessions late was something his team prepared for.

“That game was a four-minute game. And when we practice, we practice four-minute wars, four-minute games,” Gates said.

“Our guys won a four-minute game at the very end. We were able to take the lead and execute, and we didn’t make mistakes. We didn’t have self-inflicted wounds. It’s a reflection of our practices.”

Those Self-inflicted wounds Mizzou avoided were all too evident for Kentucky.

The Wildcats committed three turnovers in the final 3:44, all live-ball bad passes.

Two turnovers by Malachi Moreno cut Kentucky’s lead to six, and with less than a minute remaining, another miscue allowed Missouri to take the lead. With 30 seconds left, Garrison turned the ball over on a bad pass of his own.

Transition defense has been Kentucky’s kryptonite all season, and Pope acknowledged it remains an issue.

“We are having a tough time translating. I’m not sure exactly why, but we are having a really tough time translating,” Pope said.

“You can have pace in transition, which is awesome, and we get to that in games. Our pace in the half court stinks all the time,” Pope said. “Part of it is the personnel we’re playing with. Part of it is guys overthinking. It’s incredibly frustrating. That’s why we’re trying to simplify everything so we can execute with pace and decision-making. But we’re not there yet.”

However, Kentucky’s struggles weren’t limited to the players.

In addition to the final play call, the Wildcats’ use of timeouts in the closing stretch allowed Missouri to regroup and execute.

Pope used three timeouts in the final 1:03, with a full timeout at 1:03 and 30-second stoppages at 0:28 and 0:09.

“In that moment, whenever Kentucky called a timeout, they helped us,” Gates said. “They helped us get settled. We were able to communicate and steal some moments in execution…We didn’t turn the ball over, and that’s what won the game for us.”

Kentucky now enters its third conference game without an SEC win, and while several factors contributed to the loss, no mistakes proved more costly than late-game decisions.

For Kentucky, the loss underscored an issue that has followed the team all season — controlling games when it matters most. In the end, it turned into a cat fight between Tigers and Wildcats, and Missouri proved it had the sharper claws.