Not buying Kentucky basketball yet? Here’s one big reason to believe in the Cats
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kentucky transformed perimeter shooting in SEC play, leading the league at 38.7%.
- Ball-screen action and kick-outs generated open looks in comeback win at Tennessee.
- Coach Pope seeks higher 3-point volume to pair with efficiency and sustain gains.
A funny thing has happened as the Kentucky Wildcats have started conference play.
Mark Pope’s team can actually shoot the ball. And people are starting to notice.
On Saturday in Knoxville, the Wildcats served up their best 3-point shooting performance of the season against a quality opponent, going 11 for 24 from deep in a come-from-behind, 80-78 victory over the Tennessee Volunteers.
After the game, star UT freshman Nate Ament was going over his team’s defensive deficiencies in the second half — when the Cats outscored the Vols 49-36 — and he offered up this line:
“It’s tough when you’re dealing with great shooters,” Ament said. “And credit to them, because they are really good shooters.”
No one was saying that a couple of weeks ago. Actually, that’s not true. Pope was saying it. And his players were saying it. But, with all evidence to the contrary, few on the outside were buying those claims.
In the nonconference portion of the schedule, Kentucky shot 33.7% on 3-pointers and ranked No. 175 nationally in that stat. Against quality competition, it was even worse. In the Cats’ six nonconference games against high-major opponents, they were just 23.9% from the perimeter.
And the bad news for the Wildcats was that — once SEC play began — all they’d see for the rest of the season would be high-major competition.
Their woes against good teams continued in the league opener. Kentucky went 4 for 19 from deep in an 89-74 loss at Alabama on Jan. 3. Since then? A sea change from long range.
In their last four games — a loss to Missouri and wins over Mississippi State, LSU and Tennessee — the Cats have combined to go 37 for 87 from deep. That’s 42.5%.
Even taking that dud in Tuscaloosa into account, Kentucky has been the best 3-point shooting team in the SEC since conference play began. Five games into the league schedule, the Cats rolled into this week’s matchups ranking first in the SEC in 3-point percentage.
Who would have seen that coming after the dreadful start from deep?
Well, the Wildcats saw it coming. While the consensus outside the Joe Craft Center was that this team simply couldn’t shoot the ball, Pope and his players kept telling anyone who would listen that it wasn’t true.
Talking about the team’s shooting woes last month, Denzel Aberdeen had a simple remedy.
“I mean, to be honest, I just say, ‘Keep shooting.’ Like, eventually they gotta go in at some point,” he said, offering an it-can’t-get-much-worse chuckle after that last sentence. “But we just have to take the right shots. So, just creating, playing off two (feet), creating plays for teammates. And when we get the chance to shoot wide-open, catch-and-shoot shots — or attack the basket — we just got to make them.”
They’re making them now. And Aberdeen was right in the thick of it Saturday afternoon.
The Cats trailed Tennessee by 17 points in the first half and 11 at halftime. Timely 3-pointers by Collin Chandler and Jasper Johnson before the break helped UK avoid being run off the court completely. And then it all came together.
UK went 6 for 10 from deep in the second half. And each of those makes showcased the different ways that Pope’s team is capable of scoring from the perimeter, as long as everyone is on the same page.
Kentucky working for its 3s
Down a dozen points near the start of the second half, Aberdeen brought the ball up the court. Mouhamed Dioubate set a screen on Aberdeen’s defender well beyond the 3-point line. When the UK guard went around that screen, Dioubate’s man didn’t help — dropping back into coverage instead — and Aberdeen stepped into a 3 from the top of the key to make it a 44-35 game.
After a dunk by Ament on the other end, Aberdeen hustled the ball up the floor, drove to his left — with Ament on him — and stopped on a dime. As the 6-foot-10 Tennessee freshman kept going, Aberdeen took a stepback 3 before Ament could recover. That cut the Vols’ lead to 46-38.
A few minutes later, Johnson got the ball to Malachi Moreno in the paint. The Kentucky center took one dribble as he attempted to back down his man. Ament left the perimeter to help, and as soon as he did, Moreno kicked it back out to an open Chandler, who didn’t hesitate. Tennessee’s lead was down to 55-51.
Next trip down, Dioubate set a screen for Chandler, who then hit Dioubate with the pass as he rolled away from the pick. Dioubate drew three UT defenders and kicked the ball to the corner, where Johnson quickly rifled a pass to Aberdeen on the wing. Aberdeen pump-faked, a Vols defender flew by him, and he gathered himself to bury the 3-pointer.
A minute later, Aberdeen got around Ament and into the paint. When Tennessee guard Ja’Kobi Gillespie came over to help, he left Chandler open on the same side of the court. Chandler creeped toward the corner — to create even more space between Gillespie and himself — and Aberdeen found his teammate once the UT guard was fully committed. Chandler hit the shot.
Each of those three 3-pointers happened in a span of less than two minutes. On all three occasions, Tennessee had just taken a seven-point lead at the other end, just one possession away from making it a double-digit advantage again. But Kentucky kept it close.
Down six with eight minutes left, Otega Oweh found Johnson on the wing. The freshman guard attempted to penetrate and got just far enough to draw Ament as a help defender. That left Oweh open at the top of the key, and Johnson got the ball back to him. Oweh hit the shot, and the Wildcats had whittled that Tennessee lead down to 65-62, with plenty of time to play.
Kentucky couldn’t connect on its only two 3-point attempts in the final seven and a half minutes — both misses by Aberdeen — but the Cats managed to secure the offensive rebound on both occasions, scoring points on each of those second-chance possessions.
Both Gillespie and Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes lamented the Vols’ ball-screen defense in the second half. “We just gave them too many easy ones coming out of the half,” Gillespie said.
But Kentucky worked hard for those easy ones.
Ament said the Vols wanted to protect the paint and make sure there was plenty of help defense. “I think we kind of did a good job of that,” he said. “But they made us pay for open 3s — dribble penetration and kick-out 3s.”
UK basketball 3-point shooting
Not to belabor the point, but these perimeter looks were earned. The Wildcats didn’t luck into them. Playing in their second full game since starting point guard Jaland Lowe was ruled out for the season with a shoulder injury, the Cats found ways to generate offense in the halfcourt by relying on each other to get those open shots.
That kind of play was relatively rare in the early portion of the season. The alternative has been a much more visually pleasing brand of basketball, and the result has been the type of shooting numbers that Pope has been promising this team would eventually put up.
Kentucky’s 38.7% mark from deep in SEC play is a full two percentage points better than the No. 2 team in the league. Only four other SEC teams — LSU (36.7%), Missouri (36.0%), Tennessee (36.0%) and Texas (35.3%) — are shooting better than 35% from deep in conference play.
Oweh, who shot 32.4% on 3-pointers in nonconference play and averaged fewer than one make per game, is 10 for 23 (43.5%) from deep in five league games. Aberdeen and Chandler are both 8 for 17 (47.1%) from the perimeter in SEC games. Andrija Jelavic (4 for 8) and Johnson (3 for 6) have each made half of their 3-point shots in the conference. And Kam Williams — perhaps the most gifted in-game shooter on the roster — is just 6 for 19 so far, past results indicating that 31.6% rate in league play is destined to improve in the coming weeks.
Five games is still a rather small sample size, but Kentucky’s improvement from 3-point range appears to be rooted in something repeatable. The Cats are actually generating the type of offense that leads to good looks, as long as they remain patient enough to wait on them and aware enough to take advantage of the openings.
On Saturday, it was often good action elsewhere — screens, kick outs, movement off the ball, knowing what to do before the passes or help defense arrived — that got Tennessee discombobulated in its rotations. And Tennessee, as usual under Barnes, is one of the best defensive teams in the country.
That’s an encouraging sign for the Wildcats.
If Kentucky can keep up the perimeter progress, the next step will be to shoot it even more.
Pope came into this season with the stated goal of putting up 35 3-point attempts per game. The Cats have yet to do that once in 18 games so far, and they started this week — with a home game against Texas on Wednesday night — at 174th nationally in 3-point rate (the percentage of field-goal attempts that come from the perimeter).
Even with their high percentage from deep in SEC play, UK ranks just 14th in the league in 3-point rate during conference play. Only 36.3% of their shots in five league games have come from the perimeter, and the 24 attempts against Tennessee on Saturday have been the most so far. For comparison, Alabama came into the week leading the SEC, with 51.6% of its shots in league play coming from deep.
Is “35 3s” still a thing with this Kentucky bunch?
“Man, I would love to get back there,” Pope said last week. “You know, we’re still trying to find ourselves a little bit. But if we’re going to be at our maximum level, that would certainly be a piece of it. It would be really functional for us. Right now, there’s some other factors that we’re trying to manage to get there.”
With the constant lineup shuffling earlier this season — made even trickier by Lowe being in and out of the rotation — the Cats struggled to find their flow offensively. But they seem to be finding it now. Kentucky is second in the league in assist rate through the first five SEC games.
Good passes lead to good shots. And UK is finally starting to find both against good teams.
“We’re actually shooting the ball better, because we’re making plays for each other at a higher level,” Pope said on his weekly radio show Monday night. “And hopefully that continues, because if it does, we have a chance to be a really good offensive team.”
