{"id":31204,"date":"2025-07-02T00:26:14","date_gmt":"2025-07-02T00:26:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/31204\/"},"modified":"2025-07-02T00:26:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T00:26:14","slug":"denzel-aberdeen-was-jaland-lowes-college-hoops-wake%e2%80%91up-call-now-theyre-best-friends-at-kentucky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/31204\/","title":{"rendered":"Denzel Aberdeen was Jaland Lowe\u2019s College Hoops \u201cWake\u2011Up Call\u201d \u2014 Now They\u2019re Best Friends at Kentucky"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jaland Lowe<\/a><\/strong> will never forget the first time he met Denzel Aberdeen<\/a><\/strong>. Pitt was playing Florida in the NIT Season Tip-Off at the Barclays Center on November 22, 2023. Lowe was a freshman at Pitt; Aberdeen was a sophomore at Florida. Neither played much in that game, combining for just 14 minutes total in the 86-71 Florida victory, but it didn\u2019t take long for Aberdeen to make an impression on Lowe, who was playing just his fifth college game ever. <\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, so, I didn\u2019t like \u2018Zel at first, actually,\u201d Lowe told reporters on Monday<\/a>. \u201cI hated \u2018Zel because I played him my freshman year at Florida, and that really was my wake-up call to college basketball.<\/strong> I went out there and I tried to give him a little bump. He came in the game, and he did not move at all, and I went backwards. And then they beat us. I think they ended up beating us by like 30.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, Lowe and Aberdeen are teammates at Kentucky. Aberdeen is coming off a national championship with Florida, a run in which he played a vital role as the Gators\u2019 sixth man. Lowe started every game last season for a struggling Pitt squad, averaging 16.8 points, 5.5 assists, and 1.8 steals per game. He committed to Kentucky on April 5, with Aberdeen following suit 16 days later. It didn\u2019t take much for Mark Pope to sell Aberdeen on sharing a backcourt with Lowe, his former foe.<\/p>\n

\u201cComing in, before I even committed, I looked at the other guys who were coming in, potentially seeing if Otega [Oweh] was going to come back. I watched a lot of film on Jaland Lowe,\u201d Aberdeen said last week<\/a>. \u201cMan, a guard that can score and pass,\u00a0I\u2019ve gotta play with him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I saw him commit, I\u2019m like, oh, we got a gem for sure,\u201d Lowe said of Aberdeen. \u201cBecause even though he won a national championship, sixth man, all of that, I don\u2019t think guys really knew how good he is. And I feel like when you have that mutual respect for each other, it\u2019s like, \u2018Okay, now we\u2019re working with something. We can bounce off each other.\u2019 And I mean, that\u2019s been like my best friend since we\u2019ve been up here<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The best friends are enjoying battling against one another in practice so far, iron sharpening iron.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s very flashy, very quick guard, one of the best guards I\u2019ve seen,\u201d Aberdeen said<\/a> of Lowe. \u201cHe has everything; he can be a pro. I learn from him, he learns from me. Just watching him in practice and stuff like that, lead, I\u2019m trying to take little things he does and try to influence it into my game. Playing alongside him is going to be fun. It\u2019s going to be great. It\u2019s going to be scary for a lot of people, too.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Subscribe to the KSR YouTube Channel for press conferences, interviews, original shows, fan features, and exclusive content.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Lowe and Aberdeen ready to lead Kentucky to No. 9<\/p>\n

On Monday, Lowe said he believes Kentucky has the best backcourt in the country. He and Otega Oweh are almost certain to start, but from there, the possibilities are endless. Aberdeen is versatile enough to play alongside Lowe or back him while Jasper Johnson or Kam Williams play the two spot. Don\u2019t forget Collin Chandler, who flashed filling in for Jaxson Robinson late last season. That\u2019s a lot of options, but Lowe said Aberdeen will play a key role.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince that day [we played in 2023], I mean, I knew \u2018Zel was a strong guard who could do everything. He\u2019s just got to have the platform to allow that, and he\u2019s got more than enough tools to do everything that\u2019s required. He can shoot the ball at a very high level. He can make plays. His defense is amazing. He\u2019s got all the tools that are needed.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also has national championship experience. Lowe said that Aberdeen doesn\u2019t talk about winning the title with Florida often, but his teammates are determined to follow in his footsteps to number nine.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re just focused on having fun and getting ready to win a championship, because we came up short last year, so we don\u2019t want to do that no more. Plus \u2018Zel, he\u2019s got a \u2018chip, but we already got a thing. It was always like, all right, man, you\u2019ve got to be the first player in history to win it with two teams, two different teams.<\/strong>\u201c<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what Aberdeen likes to focus on.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, that\u2019s a huge moment for him, but he doesn\u2019t really seem to bring up that moment,\u201d Lowe said. \u201cHe\u2019s always talking about how he wants to do it over here now. And that\u2019s the goal; that\u2019s the objective.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jaland Lowe will never forget the first time he met Denzel Aberdeen. Pitt was playing Florida in the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":31205,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[1339,26411,26412,1317,1337,1338,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-31204","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-denzel-aberdeen-22-dr-phillips","10":"tag-jaland-lowe-23-fort-bend-marshall","11":"tag-ncaa","12":"tag-ncaa-basketball","13":"tag-ncaabasketball","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114780804675371396","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31204\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}