Koby Brea had a message for Missouri fans following 17-point performance
Missouri students, fans, and players likely expected to see some tears — some good tears — going into Saturday’s Senior Day matchup with Kentucky. With seven seniors on the roster helping create an excellent overall season for the Tigers, it was going to be an emotional send off.
But Koby Brea had other plans.
Instead of tears of joy running down the faces of Missouri fans, Kentucky’s sharpshooter was mocking them with tears of sorrow. Brea made sure to share his message right in front of the Mizzou Arena student section (one that loved a good f-bomb chant) the moment UK sealed a 91-83 win, spoiling Senior Day for all Tiger fans in attendance.
Brea earned that troll move, too. He finished with 17 points, four rebounds, two assists, and one steal without a turnover in 37 minutes played. The Dayton transfer shot 6-9 from the field, including a 3-5 mark from deep. When Kentucky’s offense was stuck in the mud in the first half, Brea made big plays. He was the Wildcats’ lone double-digit scorer in the first half (11 points) as he made all three of his shots from deep.
“We were a mess in the first half offensively,” Head coach Mark Pope, who had Brea make the opening statement in the postgame press conference, said. “We just couldn’t find a feel, except Koby is like ‘Don’t worry guys, I’m just gonna do my thing.’ And he did his thing.“
Brea has turned himself into more than just an outside shooter throughout the season. His defense and playmaking have improved at a gradual rate. He was averaging just 0.7 assists per game in Kentucky’s first 19 games. But over the last 10 contests, he’s up to 2.0 per outing. Some of the extra playmaking has been out of necessity as injuries ran through the backcourt, but the veteran never looked rattled. He’s tossing no-look passes now. His six assists against South Carolina on Feb. 8 marked a career-high.
That South Carolina game was the same one where Pope praised Brea’s defense afterward, which has continued to shine, as has the rest of the team on that end of the floor.
“Something that coach does a good job of talking about is just taking it personal. I’ve always said defense is a mindset,” Brea said. “When you come into the game and take your matchup personal, you’re more intense with it, you’re more focused. So I think when we took the level of intensity and tried to be more disruptive and have a presence like he also says as well, I think that’s helped us a lot.”
The defense is important, but offense is still Brea’s bread and butter. He’s scoring inside the arc more often than at any point in the season. His three-point percentage hasn’t been quite to the level of being a coin flip shooter like it was last season at Dayton, but there aren’t many better “break in case of emergency” plays than a Brea stepback triple.
“He’s been amazing for us all year,” Andrew Carr said of Brea. “He’s super consistent for us. Every single day he’s ready to work and try and get better. You see that out there on the court… It’s great when you’re through an offense and then you just see Koby dancing at the top and sometimes you’re tempted to just start running back on defense. Probably shouldn’t do that necessarily, but we’re always tempted to. It’s a credit to him and how hard he’s worked but he’s been that for us all year.”
“Appreciate that, bro,” Brea, who was two seats down from Carr with Pope in the middle, responded to his teammate.
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