With only one regular season game remaining, at Mizzou on Saturday, Cats Illustrated is tracking the latest Kentucky basketball trends ahead of the SEC and NCAA tournaments.

Here are some interesting trends since our last update tracking developments back on February 20.

Perry, Noah seeing smaller share of minutes

All season long Mark Pope has leaned into his bench. As injuries piled up, the team’s depth was tested. Even though Jaxson Robinson is out, others have returned to action and are shouldering more of a load.

Travis Perry’s minutes have declined significantly.

After Perry played between 26-28 minutes in three straight games, against Texas, Vanderbilt, and Alabama, he has played only an average of nine minutes per game over UK’s last three. The Cats were 1-2 in those games with extended minutes for Perry and have been 2-1 since the minute decline. He hasn’t scored in either of Kentucky’s last two games and has committed a couple of fouls in brief action both times.

Trent Noah’s minutes have also declined, on average, over the last two games. He did play 13 minutes against LSU but only saw eight minutes against Auburn. That’s the least action he’s seen in a two-game stretch since the end of January. Noah also hasn’t scored more than two points in a game since that mid-February game against Texas.

Chandler, Garrison on the rise

Collin Chandler and Brandon Garrison had some great plays together in Kentucky’s game against LSU and while Perry and Noah have seen their minutes decline, these two are getting more run.

Garrison played 27 minutes in UK’s win against Oklahoma and 21 minutes in the game against LSU. The impact was muted against Auburn but in the two other games Garrison was 11/20 from the field and scored 27 points. At the very least, we have now seen that, later in the season, Garrison can and often will have a substantial impact on important minutes.

He had two steals in each of those games, against LSU and Oklahoma, and dished out four assists against LSU. The rebounding impact isn’t what you would hope for but Garrison is playing some of his best basketball of the season and he’s cutting back on turnovers.

In fact, over the last three games Garrison has played more than Amari Williams.

For the season Collin Chandler has averaged two points per game and he’s only shot 32.7% from the field. But recently he has secured a place in Kentucky’s rotation down the stretch. Chandler is coming off his best game of the season against LSU when he scored 11 points (3/8 FG), grabbed four rebounds, and dished out four assists. He looks more comfortable on the court than he has at any other time this season and has shown great court vision and passing skill at times.

Oweh has been feast or famine

Consistency had been the single-most defining feature of Otega Oweh’s season until recently. He scored in double digits in every Kentucky game until the trip to Alabama. Against the Tide, Oweh only scored two points on 1/9 shooting.

That was a concerning performance, but he followed that up with 28 points on 12/21 shooting against Oklahoma. Against his former team in Norman, Oweh scored 18 straight points for the Wildcats, powering them to a 1-point victory on the road.

Oweh had his second single-digit scoring game of the year after that, with just four points in the loss to Auburn. Oweh only attempted three field goals in that game. But then Oweh scored 24 points on arguably his most efficient game of the season against LSU.

Much of what Kentucky accomplishes in the postseason will be determined by the Oweh that shows up the rest of the way. Once Mr. Consistency, Oweh has recently shown he can put Kentucky on his back, but the dud games have also come down the stretch.

Another player whose impact has been very up and down is Ansley Almonor. Right around the time he started to be singled out for an extended period of strong play, Almonor scored 15 points (6/7 FG) against LSU, but he didn’t score a point in the three games before that. In fact, he only played an average of six minutes per game in those three contests.

When Almonor has gotten more regular usage he has produced and has done so efficiently. But we have also seen Pope go away from him at times. He will be an important bench option for the Cats, especially with Jaxson Robinson out.

Amari Williams is fouling more

Different factors have gone into creating the dynamic that has led to Garrison playing more minutes than Williams recently, and one of them is fouls.

In spite of having a pretty hard minute ceiling for most of his college career, Williams hasn’t had big foul trouble issues in college. Before this season Williams had never committed more than 2.0 fouls per game.

This year he’s only at 2.2 fouls per game, but lately there have been some issues. He finished two of the last three games with four fouls. And in six of Kentucky’s last 14 games, Williams has finished with four fouls or more.

Butler’s diminished offensive impact

Lamont Butler is coming back from an injury and that’s important to remember. So at least some of his offensive decline can be attributed to that. But there has been an overall decline in offensive output and efficiency since he has worked his way back onto the court.

In the three games since his return, Butler has averaged nine points per game but only an 11-9 assist/turnover ratio and he’s 7/20 from the floor. The last two games his minutes have gotten back up closer to where they had been earlier in the season. Against Auburn he did score 15 points but he was 4/13 from the field.

That’s not to say Butler hasn’t made an impact on the game. He’s given Kentucky the kind of on ball defense they didn’t have without him. Kentucky needs him to make shots around the rim when he gets inside for him to maximize his impact on that end of the court.

Steals are up

In part because of Butler’s return, Kentucky’s steals total is up lately as a team. Kentucky had 13 steals in that loss at Alabama a couple of weeks ago. They also had 13 steals in last night’s win against LSU.

There were 10 steals against Oklahoma. The only game recently when the Cats haven’t forced a lot of turnovers via the steals route was against Auburn, which proved to be a much tougher test.

This isn’t something UK has exceled at this year. The Wildcat rank just 164th in the country at 6.8 steals per game. So that has been a big change for the defense. UK is up to No. 56 nationally in KenPom’s defensive efficiency and that has ticked up during this time period. Not long ago it was ranked below 90th.