Fourth time’s the charm? Kentucky basketball’s next big test will be a doozy
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kentucky faces Alabama in 2025-26 SEC opener after losing all 3 meetings last season.
- Alabama leads nation in offensive efficiency and averages 36.5 3-point attempts.
- Kentucky must improve communication and overall defense to compete.
When Mark Pope got the Kentucky job after the 2023-24 season, there was an easy, exciting comparison for the fun offensive style he’d be bringing with him to Lexington.
Those who were most familiar with Pope’s final BYU team pointed to Alabama as a program with a like-minded approach.
Since arriving in Tuscaloosa in 2019, coach Nate Oats had transformed the Crimson Tide into one of the SEC’s best teams. He had been a thorn in John Calipari’s side for the past few years and had just led Bama to its first Final Four appearance in school history when Pope was picked to lead Kentucky.
Oats had done all that with offense, and lots of it. The combination of a progressive scoring attack and the ample success that came with it put Oats at the top of some UK fans’ wish list after Calipari left Lexington for the Arkansas job. When Pope was hired, tales of his own offensive approach spread quickly across the fan base, and the excitement was amplified.
So, the Kentucky-Alabama tilts became even more anticipated affairs.
The two sides met three times last season. The Cats lost every one of those matchups, the gap widening each time they shared the court with Bama, which became just the third team in history to beat UK three times in one season with its 99-70 blowout of UK in the SEC Tournament.
The Tide put up 102, 96 and 99 points across the three games, making double-digit 3-pointers on each occasion. When Pope and Oats meet for the fourth time in fewer than 12 months Saturday afternoon in Tuscaloosa, the task won’t be any easier for the Wildcats.
Alabama comes into this one — the SEC opener for the 2025-26 season — sitting at No. 1 in the country in adjusted offensive efficiency, according to the Torvik ratings. The Tide rank in the top 10 nationally in turnover rate — meaning they rarely turn the ball over — and they’re top 20 in tempo. They’re also putting up 3-pointers at a ridiculous rate, even by Oats’ standards.
Through the nonconference portion of the schedule, Alabama is averaging 36.5 3-point attempts per game, which ranks second nationally and No. 1 — by a wide margin — among the seven Tide teams Oats has coached so far. And each of the previous six finished in the top 10 nationally in that stat.
On Monday night, the No. 14-ranked Crimson Tide beat Yale 102-78. They put up 54 3-pointers. And they made 22 of them. How difficult is this team to defend?
“I mean, when we move the ball like we did tonight, and we space the floor like we’ve spaced the floor, it’s a tough cover,” Oats said, pausing midway through that statement, the expression on his face saying he wished opponents the best of luck if his guys were hitting their marks.
The metrics say Kentucky is in for another tough one. Torvik’s projection calls for an 11-point UK loss — a 92-81 final, to be exact — and gives the Wildcats only a 19% chance at victory.
Pope knows his team will have a difficult task to begin league play. It’ll be the first true road game for the Cats since losing at Louisville in week two of the season, and it’ll come against perhaps the best team in the SEC.
This one also comes at a time when Kentucky is still trying to find itself defensively.
Pope’s team had an atrocious time on that end in its first few games against quality competition, putting up terrible defensive numbers in losses to U of L, Michigan State and Gonzaga, specifically, and allowing an inordinate amount of offensive rebounds in a loss to North Carolina.
A performance Saturday that comes close to any of those will almost certainly end with defeat.
“Our communication is just massively key on the defensive end,” Pope said. “It’s going to be all conference long — maybe in no case more important than at Alabama.”
The early metrics say this is Oats’ most offensively efficient team yet. A very scary thought.
“They’re bringing two and three players together all the time around the ball and putting you in all kinds of gray areas … any assortment of different things to try and get you in a gray area, where you can’t guard elite-level players,” Pope said. “And so the defense — and our communication — has been massively important.
“We’ve made huge progress. I’m really proud of the guys. Made great progress through the nonconference. It’s going to be tested in a huge way on Saturday.”
Kentucky’s tough task at Alabama
Kentucky’s past two meetings with quality opponents were indeed the best of the season. The Cats won both games — against Indiana and St. John’s — by playing hard and efficiently on the defensive end.
The second half of the St. John’s game — when Jaland Lowe returned from injury and Jayden Quaintance was settling into his UK debut — marked the first time that Pope had his full complement of players. It was no coincidence that it resulted in UK’s best 20 minutes of the season.
Lowe, who has missed time with a nagging shoulder injury, didn’t play the next time out against Bellarmine, and Quaintance — sidelined for 10 months due to a major knee injury — was on the court for only two short stints in that victory last week.
Pope has said that Lowe is not on a “minutes restriction” for big games, but he is managing the point guard’s time on the floor otherwise. Quaintance is close to having his minutes restriction lifted, and Pope said both players did everything he asked them to do in the early practices this week.
So, the positives that came out of that second half against St. John’s should at least be possible Saturday in Tuscaloosa, though trying to replicate that success won’t be easy.
Alabama comes into this one averaging 94.5 points per game, and the Tide are led by sophomore guard Labaron Philon, who is averaging 21.9 points per game himself. That’s tops in the SEC.
“He’s really hard to contain,” Pope said. “He’s so great off the bounce. And I’ll tell you the thing that I don’t think he gets enough credit for — maybe he does — but he is an elite, elite, elite-level playmaker off the bounce, man. A passer, finding guys. He’s got a real skill of threading the needle when he needs to get balls where he does. …
“He’s a big-time player.”
Philon is fourth in the SEC at 5.6 assists per game. The 6-foot-4 guard missed Alabama’s win over Yale on Monday night with a left leg contusion suffered in the previous game, but Oats said afterward that he considered him to be “pretty likely” to play against the Wildcats on Saturday.
And Philon will have a whole lot of other options around him.
Former McDonald’s All-American guard Aden Holloway is averaging 17.6 points. Two other Tide players are in double figures, and four more beyond that are putting up at least 8.7 points per game.
Kentucky allowed Louisville to hit 13 3-pointers and Michigan State to make 11 from beyond the arc, but no other team has achieved double-digit perimeter makes this season against the Cats, who rank third in the SEC and 22nd nationally in 3-point defense.
That will be tested in the SEC opener.
Alabama has made at least 10 3s in 11 of its 13 games. Eight different Tide players are averaging at least one made 3-pointer per game, and Oats’ two best scorers are leading the way, with Holloway hitting 44% on 7.5 attempts per game and Philon shooting 42.2% on 5.3 attempts per game.
No. 3 scorer Latrell Wrightsell is shooting just 27.4% from deep, but he was a 44.2% shooter over his two previous years at Bama, and he’s leading the team with 7.8 perimeter attempts per game this season. Odds are he heats up soon.
When talking about his elite shooters this week, Oats mentioned Jalil Bethea (45.5% on 3.7 attempts per game) and Houston Mallette (35.7% on 5.4 attempts), too.
“I think those guys can really put a strain on the defense, because we’ve also got guys that get in the paint,” Oats said. “So do you want to sit in the gaps, converge in the paint? Or do you want to build out and take 3s away?”
Oats said Yale’s plan was pretty clearly to take the paint away Monday.
“So we took 54 3s,” he said. “If we take 54 3s and get the right 3s, we’re going to make a lot.”
Oats noted that BYU — now coached by Kevin Young — tried to do the same thing against Bama in the NCAA Tournament last season. And the Tide ended up going 25 for 51 from deep in a 113-88 victory to advance to the Elite Eight.
It’ll be up to Pope to find a better way Saturday. Easier said than done, Oats implied.
“However you want to guard us,” he said, “I think we’ve got good answers.”
