Alabama loves to shoot 3-pointers. That might be great for Kentucky. But it’s complicated.
What happens when an irresistible urge to shoot 3-pointers meets an immovable line of defense on the perimeter?
We’ll find out Saturday afternoon.
The latest edition of Alabama-Kentucky — a college basketball rivalry that has all the ingredients to be one of the SEC’s best for years to come — should be exciting for a number of reasons. One key storyline to watch in this battle between two of the nation’s top scoring teams: Bama’s 3-point attack vs. the Cats’ so-far spectacular 3-point defense. And vice versa.
This one — scheduled for noon Saturday in Rupp Arena — should provide plenty of offensive fireworks for the ESPN viewing audience. The projections over at BartTorvik.com foresee a 93-92 victory for the Wildcats, but it wouldn’t be a surprise to see either team (or both of them) in the triple digits.
Both head coaches — UK’s Mark Pope and Bama’s Nate Oats — subscribe to a “bombs away” approach to shooting the ball, and both of their teams have excelled at defending the perimeter.
What happens in the vicinity of the arc Saturday in Rupp might tell the tale of who comes out on top.
Alabama comes in averaging 31.2 3-point attempts per game, second nationally among high-major teams (just slightly behind Illinois’ 31.5 attempts). In fact, the Crimson Tide have ranked No. 1 in the country in that stat among major-conference teams in five of Oats’ six seasons in charge. The outlier: Bama was second last year, behind only Pope’s BYU Cougars, who put up 32.0 3-pointers per game in their first season in the Big 12.
Pope’s goal of shooting 35 3s per game this season has fallen short, so far, with opposing teams tweaking their defenses in hopes of taking those looks away from the Cats, who are averaging 27.7 long-range attempts per game.
That’s still a lot. But not as much as the Tide, who will be letting it loose all afternoon in Rupp.
While Kentucky has attempted 30 or more 3-pointers in just four of its 17 games, Alabama has accomplished that feat 11 times over the same number of games. Oats’ team put up a whopping 55 3-pointers (making 19 of them) three weeks ago against South Dakota State.
And while Bama loves to pull from deep, those shots don’t fall at a terribly high rate. The Tide came out of their loss to Ole Miss on Tuesday night at 247th nationally in 3-point percentage (32.0%) but still No. 4 in the country in offensive efficiency. (A note: those numbers and the ones that follow all come via the Torvik ratings.)
Part of that discrepancy is the 3s-are-worth-more-than-2s approach by the analytically-minded Oats — even if his team isn’t the best at making them, the numbers will work in their favor over time. Part of it is the Tide’s top-tier offensive rebounding rate, leading to more second-chance opportunities. And part of it is their elite 2-point shooting numbers. Bama, known under Oats to strive for only the easiest of 2-point looks, is making 61.4% of its shots inside the arc — that number ranks third nationally — with opposing defenses paying so much attention to the perimeter that those good looks closer to the basket are often available.
For Kentucky, this should all sound familiar.
Kentucky’s defensive problem
It might surprise some that UK’s defense — rated a not-great 86th nationally after 17 games — has actually been elite at guarding the perimeter. Through 17 games, the Cats have allowed opponents to shoot just 28.1% from 3-point range, which ranked eighth in the country coming out of their 81-69 win over Texas A&M on Tuesday night, a game in which the Aggies went 0-for-12 from deep in the second half.
And those numbers aren’t skewed by the overmatched teams UK faced early in the season.
In nine games against high-major opponents, only two — Florida and Louisville — have shot better than their season percentage from deep against the Cats, and neither had especially great days in that regard. The Gators made 36.4% of their 3s against UK, and the Cards shot 35.9% from deep against the Cats. In both games, Kentucky got the win.
And the only team all season that shot better than Florida’s 36.4% was Georgia State, which managed to hit 11 of 21 3s in a game that UK won by 29 points.
“We emphasize being there on the catch and making sure that there’s a contest with every shot,” UK’s Jaxson Robinson said of the Cats’ 3-point D. “We don’t like to allow open shots.”
So, what’s the problem for Kentucky’s defense? While the Wildcats don’t force many turnovers and have struggled to keep some opponents off the offensive boards, a biggie is letting other teams get looks inside the perimeter.
UK is allowing its opponents to shoot 51.8% on 2-pointers, a number that ranks 207th nationally and 15th in the SEC (ahead of only Oklahoma).
Florida made 21 of 27 2-pointers two weeks ago, but the Cats’ offense was good enough to win that one. The same thing happened last weekend at Mississippi State, when the Bulldogs were 20-for-31 from 2, while the Cats were a little better inside the arc and much better outside of it.
An example of where this bit UK hardest: the 85-65 loss to Ohio State last month, when the Buckeyes made 26 of 39 2-pointers in what has been the low point of Kentucky’s season.
Pope has recently talked about the nuances of basketball, trying to find the balance of tweaking one aspect of something without falling into the trap of overcorrecting to the point that it creates a new problem — or makes the team considerably worse — somewhere else.
While discussing UK’s 3-point defense, Pope said the team’s “spot up” numbers have been “ridiculous” all season: “Spot up is any possession that’s played against the close-out. So it could be a shot, it could be a drive, it’s anything there.” That also includes the catch-and-shoot situations that Robinson mentioned. Pope seemed OK with many of the Cats’ other defensive metrics.
A problem — and one that showed itself clearly against Ohio State — was the team’s ball-screen defense. And part of the reason, according to Pope, has perhaps been too much of an emphasis on guarding the perimeter.
Pope explained that, ideally, the Cats would like to play two-on-two as much as they can in ball-screen situations. After getting “cooked” — Pope’s word — against the Buckeyes, they started using a third defender to slide in as an early helper in those situations.
“And so what’s the consequence of that? The consequence of that is your spot-up number is going to go down a little bit,” he said. “And that’s the rails that you’re going to constantly keep banging back and forth against. And you’re trying to just narrow those rails more than trying to attach yourself fully to one or the other.”
So, it’s a work in progress, and finding that proper balance between defending ball-screen situations while keeping teams shooting at a low percentage from deep — narrowing the rails, as Pope put it — will likely be something that the UK coaching staff is looking at all season.
Pope said the Cats’ catch-and-shoot defense has been so good, partly, because of good luck.
“But partly because we’ve been incredibly devoted to it. And we’ve maybe swung just a little bit wide on being great there, and we’ve paid some consequences. But we’re going to keep knocking back and forth against those walls, and hopefully narrow the walls.”
Stopping Alabama’s offense
Bama will be in a similar situation Saturday afternoon. Even though Kentucky hasn’t shot as many 3-pointers as it would like, the Cats are still letting it fly much more than most teams, and they’re hitting at a high rate — 36.5% on the season, which ranks No. 58 nationally and fifth in the high-octane SEC. UK also boasts one of the nation’s best offenses inside the arc, its 57.5% rate on 2-pointers ranking 23rd in the country.
But while Alabama’s 3-point defense has been nearly as good as Kentucky’s (the Tide are 15th nationally there), its 2-point defense has been much better. Bama is allowing opponents to shoot just 47.0% on 2-pointers (ranking 150 spots better nationally in that stat), and Oats’ defense has considerably improved over last season, when it was a major issue that almost derailed the Crimson Tide’s entire campaign.
This Bama team is 27th in the country in defensive efficiency. Last season, the Tide ranked 121st nationally (and still made it to the Final Four).
So, the onus Saturday will be on Kentucky to prove it can defend both the perimeter and the paint, at the same time. And Bama is likely to come into Rupp ticked off after losing 74-64 at home to Ole Miss earlier this week, an uncharacteristic offensive performance that left Oats disgusted with both his team’s approach and his own preparation.
Alabama will have Mark Sears (35.3% from 3-point range with 42 makes) and Aden Holloway (39.4% with 37 makes) as the main threats to watch from deep, with several others more than capable of hitting shots and getting hot.
Meanwhile, Clifford Omoruyi (74.6% on 2-pointers), Grant Nelson (68.1%), Labaron Philon (61.2%) and Holloway (65.2%) will be among those to watch inside the arc, with South Florida transfer Chris Youngblood capable of having a big game at any time and Sears — the preseason SEC player of the year — able to do damage from anywhere on the court.
And though Oats is committed to the 3-pointer, he’s also an adaptive offensive coach.
Kentucky fans have seen Bama decimate the Cats with ball screens in the recent past — Oats’ team worked over Oscar Tshiebwe so badly two seasons ago that the reigning national player of the year was actually benched by John Calipari — and the Tide will be picking away at any perceived weaknesses this weekend.
It’ll be up to the Cats to keep the mistakes to a minimum, and their coaches will surely have to make some adjustments over the course of the afternoon.
“It’s the fun part of the game, right?” Pope said. “… This game would be super easy if you could just say, ‘Hey, we’re gonna do this and this and this and this and this and this 100% of the time.’ But then we’d all be bored, and none of us would be here. And so it’s a really fun, data-driven, nuanced, field-driven, part of the game that’s fun.
“And we have a group that’s really invested in kind of like — we want to explore this game, man. And we want to know this game and learn this game, and our guys are well on the way of trying to do that.”
Next game
No. 4 Alabama at No. 8 Kentucky
When: Noon Saturday
TV: ESPN
Radio: WLAP-AM 630, WBUL-FM 98.1
Records: Alabama 14-3 (3-1 SEC), Kentucky 14-3 (3-1)
Series: Kentucky leads 117-41
Last meeting: Kentucky won 117-95 on Feb. 24, 2024, in Lexington
This story was originally published January 16, 2025 at 6:30 AM.
