Kentucky plays bombs away against Bellarmine. Can the Cats do it vs. SEC teams?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kentucky sank 16 of 30 threes; ball movement created multiple open looks.
- Defense faltered: Bellarmine scored 85 and marked worst Pope-era defensive efficiency.
- SEC stretch will test shooting consistency; Alabama starts regular season Jan 3.
Kam Williams was holding court with reporters in the backstage area of Rupp Arena —after dropping 3-point bombs from all over the court itself earlier in the afternoon — when his Kentucky basketball teammates started pouring out of the locker room.
One by one, the Wildcats walked by. Some of them glanced to their left and saw who was sitting there.
“Kam Williams for 3!” yelled freshman Braydon Hawthorne, in the tone of a play-by-play announcer.
A few seconds later, starting center Malachi Moreno doubled back and poked his head in the scrum.
“Steph Curry!” the 7-footer interjected.
A short time after that, Otega Oweh strolled by.
“Shooooterrrr!” he said, without breaking stride.
Williams grinned. There was a lot for him to smile about after this one.
The sophomore guard couldn’t connect on his first 3-point attempt of the day. After that …
“I didn’t think I was gonna miss a single shot,” he said after the game.
That was nearly the case.
Williams ended up going 8 for 10 from long range, scoring a career-high 26 points to lead Kentucky to a 99-85 victory over Bellarmine in the final nonconference game of the regular season.
The UK fans who packed Rupp Arena on the Tuesday afternoon before Christmas — attendance was listed at 19,706, and very few empty seats were visible — didn’t get to see much from Jayden Quaintance or anything from Jaland Lowe, the two stars of the Wildcats’ 78-66 win over St. John’s last Saturday.
Quaintance played only two shifts — one in each half — and finished with just four points and two rebounds in eight minutes in his Rupp debut. It was his second game back from major knee surgery, and UK coach Mark Pope acknowledged that he basically gave his projected NBA lottery pick the day off just 72 hours after his first competitive game in 10 months.
Pope literally gave Lowe the day off. UK’s top point guard, who showed plenty of grit in returning from a shoulder injury to lead the Cats’ comeback against St. John’s, did not play at all Tuesday afternoon. Pope said Lowe had some soreness after Saturday’s victory, and the extra rest against Bellarmine means he’ll get a full two weeks off between games.
So, the dynamic duo from Kentucky’s biggest win of the season was largely absent. The Wildcats’ defense was lacking, too. The 85 points scored by Bellarmine marked the second-highest total of the season in 10 games against Division I competition for the Knights, who came in as 35-point underdogs but never trailed UK by more than 18 points.
In fact, this marked the worst adjusted defensive efficiency number of the Pope era so far. The UK coach, who lamented his team’s play in blowout wins earlier this season, looked past that fact. This was a getaway game, after all, with some players going straight from the arena to the airport to catch flights home for the holidays.
Pope accentuated the positive in his postgame comments, and there was one big takeaway there. The Cats crushed it from beyond the arc, and it wasn’t just Williams.
Kentucky shot 16 for 30 from 3-point range. The 16 makes were a season best and just one short of the Pope-era high. The 53.3% from deep also marked the Wildcats’ top number of the season and ranks second in 49 games under Pope.
Denzel Aberdeen was 4 for 7 on 3-pointers. Jasper Johnson was 3 for 5. Williams, who hit two big ones in the win over St. John’s, stole the show.
“I asked him to do that every night for the rest of the year,” Pope said of the 8-for-10 shooting performance. “So that’s plan A.”
Oweh also had 10 assists, with four of those leading to Kentucky 3-pointers, three of them coming courtesy of Williams.
“I would like that to happen every game for the rest of the year, too,” Pope said. “I thought that was absolutely fantastic.”
Obviously, the Kentucky coach knows that won’t happen. Williams never made more than six 3s in a game as a freshman at Tulane last season. Oweh had never had more than six assists in 108 career games before Tuesday.
But Pope did see glimmers of what this group can be.
Williams came into the game shooting 23.7% with just nine 3-pointers on the season, but he shot 41.2% at Tulane last season, and Pope has said for the past several weeks that he’s been shooting the cover off the ball in UK’s practices. Pope knew the numbers would even out.
“When you’re a really good shooter, you make shots,” he said.
And Pope said Oweh — the SEC preseason player of the year — has been trying more to live by the “Make Plays for Teammates” motto of this season.
“And he did it,” the coach said. “He did it by getting downhill and making plays for guys. … And so I think those two things were really key for us, in terms of shooting the ball better.”
Pope added one caveat here.
“And the zone helps,” he said. “I mean, the zone helps, because every shot is open.”
Bellarmine played zone almost exclusively Tuesday, and a whole bunch of those 3-point looks were indeed open. But, from Pope to the players, those in the Kentucky locker room felt like they earned those open looks by moving the ball a lot better than they have in the past.
In one sense, this was the continuation of a worrying trend for these Wildcats.
In seven games against subpar competition, Kentucky is shooting 40.8% from deep, with an average of 11.4 makes per game. In six games against high-major foes, the Cats are shooting 23.9% from deep, with an average of 5.7 makes per game.
And every contest from here on out will come against a quality team. The 18 SEC games are all that remain on the regular-season schedule, which starts at No. 14 Alabama on Jan. 3 and ends back in Rupp against Florida, the defending national champion, March 7.
Can the Cats actually hit 3s at a high rate against the Bamas and Gators of the college basketball world? We’re about to find out.
Even with Lowe out, however — and after a slow start — Kentucky did look a lot better moving the ball. The passes had a purpose, one leading to another, leading to an open shot later in the possession.
Johnson, who has frustrated with his penchant for forcing shots, had seven assists and just one turnover. Aberdeen added four assists. Collin Chandler tallied three.
“The things Coach preaches about — just making plays for teammates, hitting extra passes,” Aberdeen said. “Kam Williams was elite today, and everybody else was elite sharing the ball. … Everybody was just doing good today, just catching and shooting — being ready to shoot.”
Knowing when to attack, knowing when to kick out to each other. These were things, Aberdeen said, that Pope has been preaching all season. On Tuesday, he saw it falling into place, and he was confident that it could be carried over against the top teams UK will play moving forward. And he expects this to be a “very dangerous” offensive team, as a result.
“Because we’re a good attacking team, and we’re also a good 3-point shooting team,” Aberdeen said. “We’re getting better each and every day at that. So once our 3 ball’s falling, teams scout for that. And we can also attack.”
Lowe should help open up the court in both regards when he rejoins the lineup against Alabama next weekend. Quaintance will suck up attention from opposing defenses, too, once Pope fully unleashes him in the coming weeks.
To be clear, the Cats will have to do this against someone good to start gaining more believers. Even in their wins over Indiana and St. John’s, they went a combined 7 for 31 from deep. That’s 22.6%.
For now, they believe in themselves.
“They instill confidence in me at all times,” Williams said as the teammates he was speaking of filed by him with their good-natured teasing. “You know, they keep telling me to shoot through everything. So, we’re gonna keep doing that.”
