The 108 points were great. The 17 3s were fun. Pope was ‘super proud’ of something else.
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Game day: No. 9 Kentucky 108, Jackson State 59
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Friday night’s men’s basketball game between Kentucky and Jackson State in Rupp Arena.
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The 108 points were great. The 17 3s were fun. Pope was ‘super proud’ of something else.
‘It was fun.’ Three takeaways as Kentucky basketball routs Jackson State.
Five things you need to know from Kentucky basketball’s 108-59 win over Jackson State
Box score from No. 9 Kentucky basketball’s 108-59 win over Jackson State
Kentucky basketball dominates again. Mark Pope’s Cats beat Jackson State by 49 points.
Mark Pope wanted more 3-pointers. On Friday night, he got ’em.
Following the fourth victory in four games as Kentucky’s coach earlier in the week, Pope — while acknowledging that he was “nitpicking” after another “terrific” performance from his Wildcats — lamented that they kept coming up well short of their long-stated goal to average 35 3-point attempts per game this season.
“We don’t spend time relying on guys making shots, we rely on them taking them,” Pope said then. “We were good in a lot of areas on the stat sheet, but we only got up 25 3s. That’s not us. That’s not actually who we are supposed to be.”
Three nights later, No. 9-ranked Kentucky was back in Rupp Arena, where they beat Jackson State 108-59. And this time, it was bombs away for the Wildcats.
UK made 10 of its first 13 shots out of the gate. Eight of those shots came from beyond the arc. Six of them went through the net. And by the time Collin Chandler knocked down the sixth of those 3-pointers, the Wildcats were up 26-12, and the rout was on.
The final tally: 17 made 3-pointers on 39 attempts. Both were season highs. The number of makes was just four shy of the school record of 21, put up during the 1989-90 season when “Pitino’s Bombinos” let fly from every corner of the Rupp court, the strategy of an oft-overmatched team trying to keep up with its opponent. (Rick Pitino’s first UK team also set a school record with 53 long-range attempts in a single game that season.)
Thirty-five years later, Pope’s first group of Wildcats won’t often, if ever, find themselves overmatched on the basketball court. Putting up this many 3s is simply one aspect of the offense he wants to run. And even when Kentucky’s players go through a cold period — as the Cats did Friday night, missing 10 perimeter shots in a row at one point — they’re only a make away from heating up again.
The day before the game — and two days after UK got up a measly 25 3-pointers in a 97-68 win over Lipscomb — Pope explained some of the reasons behind why his Cats were averaging a mere 27.5 3-point attempts after four games.
He said part of it was the way defenses had been playing the Wildcats, taking away looks that they knew Kentucky wanted. (Obviously, for a versatile team like this one, that only opens up other looks elsewhere.)
Pope also said his team lacked “pop rule life” in the Lipscomb game. “Pop rule” — in the Pope lexicon — basically means not letting the ball stick. More exactly, he wants his players to spend no more than 0.5 seconds with the ball before they do something with it, whether that be a pass, a shot or a dribble move.
Half a second is not a lot of time. That means the Cats have to know what they’re going to do with the ball before it actually gets to them.
“So that helps with the flow of our offense,” senior forward Ansley Almonor explained. “That helps us get a lot of 3s up, too, just having that rule.”
Almonor was 2-for-5 from deep and scored 10 points Friday night, one of five Wildcats in double figures.
The leading scorer was Koby Brea, who dropped 22 points on Jackson State and went 5-for-8 from 3-point range. This came after he hit all three of his perimeter attempts against Lipscomb three days earlier. After that Lipscomb game, Pope’s declaration that the Cats needed to take more 3s was relayed to Brea, who smiled wide when he heard the words.
“Music to my ears,” he said.
Five games into his Kentucky career, Brea is 20-for-27 on 3-pointers, hitting at an obscene rate of 74.1%. And with the three misses Friday night, his percentage for the season actually went down.
“One of my many favorite moments tonight, he banged a 3 right in the corner in front of me and turned around and started talking trash to me,” Pope said. “That was awesome. I love that. I mean, Koby’s in a tough spot, man, because he goes 5-for-8 from the 3-point line, and it’s destroying his shooting percentage, which is just crazy. I’ve never seen that in my lifetime. He sure is doing special things for us, like all of our guys are right now.”
Otega Oweh scored 21 points. Jaxson Robinson made his first three 3-point attempts and scored 14 on the night. Lamont Butler added 11, and Almonor had 10.
And there was plenty of adherence to the “pop rule” in game five of the Pope era. The Wildcats ended up with 29 assists on 41 made baskets. They’re now shooting 42.3% from 3-point range. To put that in perspective, UK led the nation in 3-point shooting last season — at 40.9%.
Jackson State (0-6) wasn’t the strongest of opponents. The Tigers came into the night at No. 322 in the KenPom ratings, the lowest-ranked foe on Kentucky’s regular-season schedule.
Their coach is Mo Williams, the veteran NBA point guard, and he had plenty of praise for the passing ability and unselfishness that these Wildcats showed, a hallmark of the season so far.
“What sticks out to me the most is how they share the ball,” he said.
After listing off the reasons why he thinks this UK team will be a major threat in the postseason, Williams returned to that point.
“The ball moves faster than the man,” he said. “As a coach, you always preach that. ‘Move the ball. Get the ball hopping. Move the defense with the pass, not the dribble.’ And they do a great job of that. One thing that stood out to me on tape, and obviously throughout the game — watching it today — is how the ball doesn’t stick. When we say stick, when someone passes the ball to someone, they hold it for a couple seconds, trying to figure out what they have. They do a good job of getting off the ball and moving without the ball and actually making the right read.
“I think that is the most important thing. You can have pace in your offense. You can have movement in your offense, but if you don’t make the right read, it doesn’t give you an advantage. They do a good job of getting off the ball and making the right read to the right person. And they know where their shooters are. It’s an old cliché that has been around the NBA for a long time — when you’re making a pass, it has to be on time, and it has to be on target. And they do a good job of making good passes on time and target.”
Hearing that about his team from a guy who played 13 seasons in the NBA must be music to Pope’s ears.
There was plenty to talk about beyond the double-digit guys in the points column, too.
Sophomore big man Brandon Garrison had six points, eight rebounds, six assists, three blocked shots and three steals. He was one of four Cats with five or more assists. “I thought he was terrific tonight,” Pope said.
Chandler came off the bench and canned two 3-pointers. He had a plus-29 rating in just 13 minutes, still working his way back into basketball after spending two years on a Mormon mission. “He’s an extraordinary talent,” Pope said. “And we’re all going to be surprised with what he turns into, but we shouldn’t be. … Beautiful, beautiful young man.”
Much to the delight of the Rupp Arena crowd, Travis Perry and Trent Noah — the two Kentucky kids, 11th and 12th in the Cats’ rotation — hit the first 3-pointers of their college careers late in the second half, the fans roaring for each one. “They’re really, really special,” Pope said. “And they’re having a massive impact on this team. And their futures are incredibly bright.”
One of the strangest lines of the night belonged to Kerr Kriisa, a starter of 93 career games at the high-major level before accepting a reserve role in his fifth season of college. Eleven Wildcats scored Friday night. Kriisa was the only scholarship player who didn’t. But he led the team with seven assists.
“That’s exactly how a Kentucky basketball team is supposed to function,” Pope said. “We had one guy that didn’t score, and he led us in assists with seven. And every other guy on the court scored and shared the ball. And we had four guys with five or more assists in the game. Those are all really important markers for how we want to represent this state, and how we want to play this game, and what we believe wins. So I was super proud. You can tell I’m happy about it.”
This story was originally published November 22, 2024 at 11:12 PM.
