Who had the better LSU game-winner? Malachi Moreno or Tonie Morgan? Kentucky players answer

The Pete Maravich Assembly Center has been awfully kind to Kentucky basketball to start the new year.

On the very first day of 2026, Kenny Brooks took his Wildcats into Baton Rouge for a showdown against Kim Mulkey and the No. 5 overall LSU Tigers.

In a matchup that was close for nearly the entire 40-minute game, LSU took a one-point lead with 18 seconds left in regulation. Brooks put the ball in the hands of point guard Tonie Morgan, who danced around the perimeter for a few dribbles, trying to find Clara Strack in the post for a game-winning paint shot. But Strack was unable to clear the space needed for Morgan to make the pass, so she took matters into her own hands. With a couple of seconds left on the clock, Morgan rose over the LSU defender and fired off a three-pointer that hit nothing but net with only .5 seconds to go, giving Kentucky a two-point lead and an eventual statement win, 80-78, over the Tigers.

Fast forward nearly two weeks, and a similar situation popped up down the stretch in the same building — this time on the men’s side.

Mark Pope‘s crew trailed by as many as 18 points early in the second half against a desperate LSU team before mounting a massive comeback. The two teams traded leads in the closing minutes, but the Tigers were clinging to a one-point advantage with just 1.6 seconds in regulation. After LSU clanked a pair of free throws, Collin Chandler stood on the opposite baseline and threw a bomb 70 feet down the floor, which floated to a spot that only Malachi Moreno could reach. The freshman seven-footer quickly turned toward the basket and fired up a long two that dropped through the rim as time expired, lifting Kentucky to a 75-74 victory.

Somethin’ about a buzzer beater. 😼@KentuckyMBB 🤝 pic.twitter.com/Ws1KwM24Sv
— Kentucky Women’s Basketball (@KentuckyWBB) January 15, 2026

Both shots are ones the Big Blue Nation will remember for a while. It also allowed the players to have some fun with it. Who had the better game-winning shot? Morgan or Moreno? You can probably guess who picked which shot.

“That’s a hard one,” Otega Oweh said Friday when asked which one was better. “Personally, I like Malachi’s because that’s for us. Tonie’s was cold, too. That was an iso stepback three, that one is definitely one you’re going to remember, for sure.”

Oweh even clarified that Chandler did, in fact, plan to aim for Moreno on that pass. Oweh was the intended first option with Denzel Aberdeen serving as the backup option, but Chandler saw something from his perspective that led him to launch a perfect pass to the tallest guy on the floor. Hard to argue with his decision, too.

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“He did, for sure,” Oweh said when asked if Chandler was looking for Moreno. “I was all the way to the left side of the court and it went all the way to the right side. He definitely meant to throw it to Mali.”

Morgan, however, believes her shot was the superior game-winner. As did Strack, who chimed in immediately with “Tonie’s” when a reporter asked which shot was better in Thursday’s postgame press conference following UK’s win over Florida.

“I’m gonna go me, obviously,” Morgan said. “But his was great. But I think mine was first, it was better, on the first of the year, way to start the year.”

Obviously, both shots were incredible in their own ways. Morgan’s knocked off a top-five team in the country. Moreno’s completed an 18-point comeback. We’re not trying to pit them against each other; it’s all in good fun. I mean, how often does Kentucky beat the same team, in the same building, off similar game-winners, all within a two-week span? Those are special moments that don’t come around all that often. Imagine how LSU fans feel about it? Imagine being an LSU fan who attended BOTH games?

Brooks put it best: “Kudos to the social media. Who did the Spiderman thing? That was pretty cool. That was pretty cool.”