Mark Pope didn’t like one stat from last season. Can he fix it in year two?
On their final night together, coach Mark Pope’s first Kentucky basketball team broke a school record that had been around for 32 years. In fact, it was a mark that was set the season before Pope joined the program as a Wildcats player.
With Lamont Butler’s 3-pointer toward the end of UK’s loss to Tennessee in the NCAA Tournament, the 2024-25 Cats topped out at 341 made 3s for the season, one more than Rick Pitino’s 1992-93 Wildcats connected on during their Final Four run.
Obviously, with the record-breaking shot coming at the end of a heartbreaking, season-ending loss, there was no cause for celebration — or even a mention of it — in the postgame locker room that night.
But the mark could still be seen as a measure of success for Pope and his coaching staff, a group that came to Lexington last spring preaching an offensive approach that would be heavy on the 3-point shot for a team filled with players who were more than up to the task.
Pope’s second UK team is viewed as even more talented than his first, but this coming season’s personnel boasts more physicality — and, seemingly, less finesse — than last season’s group.
Does that mean less of an emphasis on 3-pointers?
In an interview with the Herald-Leader in late April, one of UK’s returning players, Collin Chandler, was still among those wondering what the Cats’ offensive attack would look like in year two of the Pope era.
“I haven’t exactly talked to Coach Pope about (his plans),” Chandler said. “I mean, last year, coming into the season, that was a big focus for us was getting up 3s. We had a bunch of great shooters on the team. And so what we were hoping to do is to score the ball from behind the arc, and we obviously had amazing players to do that.
“So I don’t know exactly if we’re going to still have a huge emphasis on that. I mean, we’ll have to see when we all get on campus and start playing with each other. But I’m proud of our guys and what we were able to accomplish this last year. And hopefully, yeah, we can do that.”
Pope didn’t need to wait and see what his second UK team looked like in person before deciding how he wants them to play this season. In his first press conference of the offseason, the UK coach made it clear that 3-pointers will indeed be on the menu in year two.
While last season’s team set school records for 3-point makes (341) and 3-point attempts (910) — finishing sixth on the all-time list with a 37.5% hit rate — Pope was not pleased with the numbers.
“I failed miserably at that last year,” the coach declared of the final results when reminded of the coaching staff’s preseason goals.
While Pope sometimes referred to that target as 30 3-point attempts per game, his longtime assistant and “offensive coordinator” Cody Fueger put the number at 35. Either way, the Cats fell short, averaging only 25.3 long-range tries per game.
Despite the school records, the relative lack of volume was a sore spot for Pope throughout the season, with the first-year head coach making clear that he’d like to see more 3-point attempts.
And that will remain the goal going into the 2025-26 campaign.
“We’d like to remedy that. It’s really important to us. I felt like we accomplished a lot last year, but that was one of the spaces that was disappointing. We just —,” Pope said before pausing and making a noise to drive home the frustration of not hitting that goal. “It was hard. And part of it was roster changes made it a little bit more complicated, but that’s an important part of how we play the game. It’s an important part of how the game is played now. And so we’d like to chase that.”
But now that the 2025-26 roster is set, does Pope have the personnel to follow through?
Kentucky’s 3-point attack
This time last year, Kentucky’s incoming roster was packed with 3-point threats.
Koby Brea was arguably the best returning 3-point shooter in all of college basketball, with 100 long-range makes at Dayton the previous season. Brea was one of four players on the roster — Ansley Almonor, Kerr Kriisa and Jaxson Robinson were the others — that attempted at least 6.0 3-pointers per game (and made at least 2.5 per game) during the 2023-24 season.
With those players joining Lamont Butler, Andrew Carr, Otega Oweh and other capable 3-point threats, Pope’s first UK team was built to let it fly.
His second team is not. At least, on paper, it’s not.
None of the players on UK’s 2025-26 roster took more than 5.0 3-pointers per game last season. And none made more than 2.0 3-pointers per game.
Pittsburgh transfer Jaland Lowe — the presumed starting point guard for the Cats — led everyone on this roster with 5.0 attempts per game last season, but he shot just 26.6% from deep.
Tulane transfer Kam Williams hit a total of 63 3-pointers as a freshman — leading all UK newcomers with 1.9 made 3-pointers per game, at a clip of 41.2% — and he tallied 4.6 attempts per game. Florida transfer Denzel Aberdeen attempted 2.6 3s per game, and Oweh attempted 2.1 per game at Kentucky — sixth on UK’s team in that stat last season.
So, if the Cats are actually going to hit Pope’s goal of (at least) 30-plus 3-point attempts per game, a few players on this roster are going to need to get shots up at a much higher rate than they did last season.
Kentucky’s coach should have some willing participants on the perimeter, at least.
Aberdeen, in an expanded role at Kentucky, and Oweh are both likely to take more 3-pointers this season, and the same goes for Chandler (1.9 attempts per game last season), fellow returnee Brandon Garrison (1.1) and Alabama transfer Mouhamed Dioubate (0.7).
UK will also have four college basketball newcomers on the 2025-26 team, with star guard Jasper Johnson and possibly 6-11 forward Andrija Jelavic expected to put up shots from beyond the arc.
Garrison, who took exactly zero 3-point shots in his freshman season at Oklahoma State, is an example of what’s possible in Pope’s system. The 6-10 forward attempted 40 3-pointers in his first year at Kentucky, his confidence growing as the season progressed, something he credited Pope with helping him work through.
“Just having a coach that will allow you to miss shots, you know,” Garrison told the Herald-Leader, “and not expect every shot to go in, because it’s part of the game. But as long as you’re like, owning your shot and not just doing crazy shots, I feel like he accepts it and doesn’t take you out of the game for it.”
That freedom should lead to more shots, for the Cats who choose to accept it.
Figuring out Pope’s offense
Adjusting to the offense that Pope and Fueger run at Kentucky comes with a learning curve. Several UK players said at various points of last season that it was challenging to play at the pace while shooting at the rate that UK’s coaches demanded, and Robinson — the only Wildcat who had previously played for Pope — acknowledged that it took time to figure out how to function within the offense, from the perspective of shooting 3s.
At the beginning of the season, Robinson — Pope’s leading scorer at BYU the previous year — was clearly the most comfortable Cat on the court, offensively. As time wore on, others caught up, and — by the end of the season — players were getting shots up more quickly than they had a few months earlier.
Chandler, for instance, was 5-for-26 from deep over his first 23 games. The freshman guard went 12-for-23 over his final seven games, including a pair of 3-pointers in each of UK’s two NCAA Tournament victories.
“We shoot a lot,” he said, with a big laugh to underscore his own understatement. “We focus on that a lot. And in games, the biggest thing is comfort and confidence. And so that kind of clicked in my game toward the end of the season, where I felt very comfortable shooting the ball coming into the game — and shooting from wherever. I felt confidence in myself, and I felt the confidence of my teammates and coaches that they were confident in me shooting the ball.
“And so those were big things that impacted me and my performance.”
Pope’s hope is that mentality will spread throughout his roster.
Chandler, Garrison, Oweh and fellow returnee Trent Noah, who’s not shy about putting up 3-pointers, now have that year of foundation in Pope’s system. That means more experience playing his brand of offense and more voices to explain exactly what the coach wants to the newcomers.
UK’s players last season admitted that the freedom Pope gave them was difficult to fathom, and — for a bunch of guys in their fourth or fifth year of college — it took some time to fully understand that, yes, he really did want them to shoot as much as possible.
“His emphasis is always, ‘Make our mistakes.’ Meaning, doing the things that we want to do in our system, within our offense. And as long as we’re doing that, we’re good,” Chandler said. “And so missing shots is 100% ‘our mistakes’, because he wants us to shoot it. So whether it goes in or out, I don’t think he’s worried about that, which does give you a lot of confidence as a player to shoot the ball when you’re getting the opportunity.”
If Pope’s new guys can accept that quickly, perhaps more 3-pointers will be coming.
And that added length and physicality — with newcomers like Dioubate, Williams, possible NBA lottery pick Jayden Quaintance and McDonald’s All-American center Malachi Moreno — isn’t necessarily a hindrance to more 3-point shots.
Another area of lament for Pope last season was offensive rebounding, which he sees as vital to helping his team hit those high 3-point numbers. More offensive rebounds mean more possessions, and those second-chance opportunities can often lead to open perimeter shots.
UK was 13th in the SEC in offensive rebounding percentage last season, ranking outside the top 200 nationally. The Cats should be much better there this season, with all the length and athleticism that’s been added to the roster.
“He was continuing to push us to shoot and to crash the offensive boards,” Chandler said of Pope. “That was a big thing for us to kind of go with those shots.”
Leading the way in Pope’s push for more 3s might be his leading scorer from last season.
Oweh, who averaged 16.2 points per game — but attempted 9.4 2-pointers compared to only 2.1 3-pointers per game — chose to return to UK after going through the NBA draft process this spring. One of the main takeaways he received from NBA decision-makers: Shoot more 3s.
“They really just wanted to see me take more, because my percentage was good both years,” said Oweh, who shot 35.5% from deep at UK and 37.7% in his sophomore season at Oklahoma. “It was just the volume. So they really just wanted to see me take more.”
Oweh sounded more than ready to embrace the role of a 3-point threat. He now has a familiarity with Pope’s approach, and the UK coach is surely hoping his returning star’s attitude will be contagious.
“I feel like being in Coach Pope’s system, and the confidence that he puts in his players, it’s mainly you. Just how comfortable you are, and you put the work in,” Oweh said. “So now it’s like, ‘I know what I have to do.’ I know, ‘This is what’s gonna push me to that next level.’ … I just got to go out there and do it.”
