With Jaland Lowe out for the season, here’s what’s next for Kentucky’s offense
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Jaland Lowe will undergo season-ending shoulder surgery, sidelining Kentucky’s starter.
- Denzel Aberdeen projects as primary point guard as coaches retool offensive roles.
- Jasper Johnson, Kam Williams and Malachi Moreno poised to expand playmaking duties.
What had seemed inevitable for weeks became reality Monday night.
Jaland Lowe has been ruled out for the remainder of this college basketball season, and that will put the Kentucky Wildcats in quite a bind from here on out.
Lowe, who was recruited to be the team’s starting point guard last spring and finally settled into that role in recent games, reinjured his right shoulder in the opening minutes of UK’s 92-68 victory over Mississippi State last Saturday night.
The same injury — initially suffered during the Blue-White scrimmage in October — left him sidelined for the start of the regular season and limited him to just nine appearances in the team’s first 16 games.
UK coach Mark Pope announced on his weekly radio show Monday night that Lowe, who started the past two games for the Wildcats, would undergo season-ending surgery.
Earlier in the day, Pope was asked by the Herald-Leader about his team’s struggles to get into a rhythm with Lowe and star forward Jayden Quaintance — currently sidelined with a knee issue — in and out of the lineup due to injury this season.
“Well, it’s been a challenge,” Pope acknowledged. “Not unlike every team faces, right? So it’s not a unique challenge in the sense of every team is facing it, but it is a challenge trying to establish an identity. Mostly because those two pieces are very unique to our team. Jaland Lowe brings something to our team that nobody else brings to our team, and JQ brings something to our team that nobody else brings. And they’re both important parts of it.
“So it’s not like we just move on to the next guy in the same way. We have to retool a lot of things as we move on to the next guy. And so that part’s been a little bit of a challenge, but it’s the same challenge that everybody faces every single season.”
This is the second consecutive season in which Pope is having to shuffle the plan at point guard. In his first season as UK’s head coach, starting point guard Lamont Butler was in and out of the lineup due to injuries — ultimately playing the postseason at far less than 100% health — and Pope lost secondary options Kerr Kriisa and Jaxson Robinson to season-ending injuries.
On the whole, the Cats’ offensive attack has looked stagnant against quality competition this season when Lowe hasn’t been in the game, but Pope was encouraged by the team’s performance in the victory over Mississippi State.
Lowe departed before the first TV timeout — with UK in a 7-4 hole — yet the Cats recovered to earn a blowout victory, dishing out 21 assists in the process, by far their best total of the season against a high-major opponent. Twenty of those assists came after Lowe left the game.
Pope said after the win that he was pleased with the way his players responded to Lowe’s absence, singling out senior guard Denzel Aberdeen for his play that night.
“I thought DA was really good,” he said. “He’s put up bigger numbers in a couple games against high majors, but this was his most solid outing where the game really made sense, and it made sense with his team. So I thought he responded well.”
Aberdeen tallied 16 points with four assists and two turnovers against the Bulldogs. He had a plus-16 rating in the second half, when he played 17 minutes. Only Otega Oweh played more after halftime.
Pope was even more impressed after going over the video of Saturday’s game.
“(Aberdeen) was good live, and then he was really good in the film review,” Pope said Monday night. “He had some real patience. It was probably his best game at winning driving lines. He had great patience off two feet. There were a couple of possessions where he got downhill, got to two feet, and everything was a mob scene. And then the waters parted, and he was able to finish athletically. He attacked purposely to make plays for teammates.”
Aberdeen is the clear frontrunner to be UK’s starting point guard moving forward. It’s a role that he’s already played this season — when Lowe has been out — and he’s actually been the Wildcats’ primary point guard in recent games.
Over UK’s past five games, Aberdeen has played 40% of the minutes at the position, according to KenPom lineup data. Lowe is at 36%. The Cats’ two most frequently used lineups over the past five games have featured Aberdeen, Oweh, Mouhamed Dioubate, Malachi Moreno and either Collin Chandler or Kam Williams.
Against Mississippi State, the Wildcats’ five most frequently used lineups all featured Aberdeen at the point. Those groups — four of the five also featuring both Oweh and Williams — played a combined 22:16 on Saturday, and UK outscored Mississippi State 54-36 with them on the court.
“I was proud of him,” Pope said of Aberdeen’s performance “… And I expect him to get better and better and better as the season goes.”
Kentucky’s options without Jaland Lowe
Aberdeen won’t be able to do it alone for the remainder of the season.
Back in the fall, Pope talked up several Wildcats as viable options to play the point. Though Lowe was clearly established as the starter, Pope mentioned Aberdeen, Chandler, Oweh and Jasper Johnson as players capable of filling in at the position.
Johnson — a highly touted freshman — emerged against Mississippi State as the go-to backup when Aberdeen wasn’t on the court. Pope said Monday night that he liked the “force” and confidence that Johnson played with against the Bulldogs.
“He’s probably our most gifted passer,” he said. “He’s an explosive scorer. He’s growing every day defensively.”
Pope noted that Johnson earned his first win of the season Monday in a team-wide defensive drill that the Cats regularly do in practice. If he can be viable on that end of the floor, Johnson should get plenty of looks at the point as this season progresses.
He didn’t record an assist in 10 minutes against Mississippi State — and he has only three assists in 73 minutes against high-major competition this season — but Johnson is likely to get ample opportunities to boost that tally.
“He’s fully engaged and competing,” Pope said. “He clearly has a huge ceiling, and he’s grown a lot this season. So, he’s going to get an increased chance to have a massive impact on this team. And we’re excited about it. Like I said, he’s a special young man — a gifted, talented player — and we’re going to get to see him grow in front of the whole world now.”
Johnson is averaging nearly five assists per game against lesser competition this season. In UK’s 99-85 win over Bellarmine before the holiday break, he had seven assists and just one turnover in 22 minutes.
He played only six minutes against Alabama in the SEC opener and didn’t play at all in the loss to Missouri four days later — his first DNP of the season — but the performance against Mississippi State offered a reminder of his offensive ability.
Johnson had five points in those 10 minutes against the Bulldogs, hitting a 3-pointer in the first half and getting to the rim for a layup off a shifty play in transition in the second. He was a plus-16 for the game. Only three Cats — Oweh, Moreno and Williams — fared better.
Chandler and Oweh have shown flashes of their playmaking ability, too.
Oweh dished out 10 assists in that win over Bellarmine and has averaged 4.0 per game in SEC play so far, including five assists Saturday night. Chandler had eight assists in a win over North Carolina Central on Dec. 9, and while his highest assist totals have come against low-major teams, he did dish out three assists in Kentucky’s win over St. John’s last month.
Lowe entered the starting lineup in Chandler’s place two games ago, but — while Chandler’s playing time is likely to increase with Lowe out — he might have a tough time getting that starting spot back.
Is there a possibility that Williams might join UK’s first five? A listener to the radio show had that question for Pope on Monday night. “Yes,” the coach responded.
Tom Leach asked Pope what it would take for that to happen.
“It could take a season-ending injury to Jaland Lowe,” he said.
Pope chuckled at his own answer there, and he’s heaped praise on Williams in recent days. The sophomore guard was a plus-32 — by far the best on the team — against Mississippi State, going for 14 points, five rebounds, two assists and two steals in that game. He’s also one of the best defenders on the roster and has the potential to be the best 3-point shooter on the team.
UK’s coaches have been imploring Williams to get downhill more offensively, and he did that against Mississippi State. Pope said he was doing it again in practice Monday.
“Every time I see Kam engage in the physicality and force of the game, it’s exciting,” he said. “Because he does so many other things brilliantly.”
Williams has a plus-192 rating for the season — meaning UK has outscored the competition by 192 points with him on the floor — and that’s the best on the team by a wide margin. Moreno, at plus-140, is next.
Moreno could also factor into UK’s playmaking going forward. In the Mississippi State game, he led the team with six assists, and the freshman center has been asking the coaching staff to play through him more in the post. It worked Saturday.
Kentucky will play at LSU on Wednesday night. Pope’s hope is that the Lowe-less Wildcats can continue to build on their budding chemistry against the Tigers.
“I do think we’re making some progress,” he said Monday night. “I actually really do. I think guys are becoming more comfortable with each other and more caught up with what we’re trying to do. And we still have so much growth to do, and sometimes it comes painstakingly slow, but we are seeing progress, and we’re really, really hopeful about that. I think we have a good future.”
