ST. LOUIS — Otega Oweh and Brandon Garrison teamed up to make the play to extend Kentucky’s season.

It was a fitting end to a game in which the Cats got plenty of big plays from both players.

No. 7 seed Kentucky survived a major scare from 10-seeded Santa Clara in the first round of the NCAA Tournament on Friday afternoon, beating the Broncos, 89-84, in overtime in the Enterprise Center to keep its 2025-26 season alive.

Clinging to a two-point lead in OT, Oweh corralled a defensive rebound and hit Garrison for a fast-break dunk to put the Cats ahead 83-79 with less than a minute to go. Before that, Oweh made two free throws to give Kentucky the lead for good.

And a few minutes earlier, Oweh banked in a deep 3-point shot at the buzzer of regulation to tie the game at 73 and send it to overtime, as memorable a March Madness sequence as Kentucky has enjoyed in recent years.

For the second year in a row, coach Mark Pope’s team will advance to the second round of the NCAA Tournament, a place the program had been only once since 2019 before he took over for John Calipari two years ago.

This one was a nail-biter.

Moments before Oweh’s buzzer-beater, Santa Clara’s Allen Graves had given the Broncos a 73-70 lead on a 3-pointer with 2.4 seconds left, seemingly the shot that would end UK’s season. Right before that, Oweh tied the game at 70 on a layup with 9.9 seconds remaining.

Kentucky advanced to play the winner of the Iowa State-Tennessee State game in the round of 32 in St. Louis on Sunday.

Oweh led Kentucky with a career-high 35 points, eight rebounds and seven assists. Mouhamed Dioubate scored 17 points. Denzel Aberdeen had 16 points. Garrison added 10 points, seven rebounds and six blocked shots.

Kentucky, which led for most of the first half but trailed by one point at the break, led 51-44 after a poster dunk by Garrison and then a 3-pointer from Aberdeen with 12:21 remaining, but Santa Clara fought back from there.

The Broncos went on a 10-2 run over the next three minutes and change to retake the lead, 54-53, and — after Oweh briefly put the Cats back on top with a bucket — Santa Clara guard Sash Gavalyugov scored five points in two possessions to make it a 59-55 game.

Two free throws from Dioubate and a fast-break layup from Oweh, who got fouled on the play and hit the and-one free throw, gave Kentucky a 60-59 lead with under eight minutes left.

The game was tied at 68 with two minutes left on the clock, but Graves grabbed an offensive rebound and scored on the put-back to give the Broncos a 70-68 advantage, leading Mark Pope to call a timeout with 1:25 left.

Oweh got an open look at a 3-pointer on UK’s ensuing possession, but that shot rimmed out, and — after forcing a miss on the other end — the Cats couldn’t corral the defensive rebound, giving Santa Clara the ball back with 20 seconds on the shot clock and 39.6 seconds left in the game.

After forcing another miss, Oweh jumped on a loose ball, and Kentucky was able to call a timeout with 24.2 seconds left before Santa Clara could get a jump ball call.

Neither team found much room to breathe in the first half.

Kentucky avoided the kind of crippling start that often plagued the Cats during big games in the regular season. UK grabbed three offensive rebounds on its first possession, which ended with a bucket by Malachi Moreno, who had two of those offensive boards.

Three-pointers by Aberdeen and Oweh on the next two possessions staked the Cats to an early 8-2 lead, but that ended up being their biggest advantage of the half.

Santa Clara fought back to tie the score at 8 — extending possessions by getting offensive boards, one of the Broncos’ strengths all season — and neither team led by more than five points after that.

Christian Hammond gave Santa Clara its first lead of the afternoon with a 3-pointer to make it an 11-10 game with 14:20 left in the half. Garrison followed that up with a personal 6-2 run, attacking the basket with a series of drives and post moves, to give the lead back to the Cats.

A steal from Oweh, who passed the ball ahead to Aberdeen for a dunk on the fast break, put Kentucky up 23-18 as the clock ticked inside of six minutes. A 3-pointer from Dioubate a little while later gave UK a 26-21 lead.

The Cats relied heavily on the 3-point shot in the first half, but they didn’t make many of them. UK was 4 for 15 from deep in the period, often settling for long-range attempts instead of driving it to the basket. Collin Chandler, a 42.7% 3-point shooter coming into the game, was 0 for 5 in the first half.

Meanwhile, the Broncos played most of the period without Graves, a potential NBA draft pick, who was mired in foul trouble, picking up his third with 7:26 still left in the half after playing a little more than six minutes.

Still, Santa Clara went on a 10-3 run to finish the half — a 3-pointer by Aberdeen accounting for Kentucky’s only points in the final five minutes of the first half — and the Broncos took a 31-29 lead into the break. They led for only 2:56 in the first half. Kentucky was ahead for 13:02 before halftime.

That set up the decisive second half, and the overtime that followed.

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