Jack Gohlke 2.0? Iowa State has a bigger, better version of an old UK nemesis
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Iowa State junior forward Milan Momcilovic leads the Cyclones with 17.1 points per game.
- Momcilovic is shooting 49.4% from 3-point range this season.
- Kentucky faces Iowa State on Sunday afternoon in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
Kentucky basketball fans don’t need a reminder of what happened two years ago inside PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh.
But what happened March 21, 2024, set the stage for what’s occurred for the UK program over the past two years.
On that day, John Calipari coached the last of his 533 games for the Cats. A major reason why was the play of Oakland’s Jack Gohlke, a sixth-year guard who scored 32 points and made 10 3-pointers as the 14 seed Golden Grizzlies upset 3 seed Kentucky in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
Now amid Mark Pope’s second March Madness run as Kentucky’s coach, there’s another player who will pose major problems for the Cats from behind the 3-point line.
Iowa State junior Milan Momcilovic is far more of a household name than Gohlke was entering the Cyclones’ second-round NCAA Tournament matchup with Kentucky on Sunday afternoon in St. Louis.
Momcilovic — a 6-foot-8 forward who was a four-star prospect in the 2023 high school recruiting class — leads Iowa State with 17.1 points per game. He’s started each of Iowa State’s 35 games this season, and his prowess as a 3-point shooter has been one of the Cyclones’ main calling cards.
Momcilovic is shooting a blistering 49.4% on 3-pointers this season. This mark isn’t inflated by a low number of shots from deep, either. Momcilovic puts up an average of 7.5 3-pointers per game. He’s averaging 3.7 distance shots made per contest.
“He’s put up staggering numbers,” Pope said Saturday afternoon. “… It’s really, really impressive. It’s gotta put him in rarefied air. I don’t know where that stands with everybody else in the country. They earn him a lot of shots with their pace. They earn him shots with actions. He earns himself shots by being an elite-level screener and a relocator. So it’s gotta be a little bit of a team effort.”
Pope’s assumption is correct.
As of Saturday afternoon, Momcilovic ranks first in the nation in 3-point percentage and in total 3-pointers made (130). He’s also fourth in the country in 3-pointers made per game and 21st nationally in total 3-pointers attempted (263).
“Shooting is hard, there’s a lot of ups and downs with it, but I think over time I just got a lot better, more consistent,” said Momcilovic, who shots 51.3% from the floor overall. “This year, I think you can kind of see I took off and played really consistent throughout the whole year. It’s a lot of credit to my teammates, them setting screens and looking for me. I’ve just got to shoot it and hope it goes in.”
Momcilovic — who plays more than 30 minutes per game for the Cyclones — is also likely to shoulder more of the load for head coach T.J. Otzelberger’s team Sunday. All-American senior forward Joshua Jefferson is unlikely to play for the Cyclones because of a sprained left ankle suffered during Iowa State’s first-round win over Tennessee State.
From Kentucky’s perspective — and regardless of whether Jefferson plays or not — certain defensive principles will be emphasized ahead of the matchup against Momcilovic.
“Communicating on ball screens and being physical on ball screens. Blowing up staggers, [dribble handoffs] and being alert of the shooters at all times,” UK junior forward Mo Dioubate said. “Knowing who you can help off and who you can’t help off. You’ve just got to keep an eye on shooters at all times in the game. Just play with a (high) IQ.”
“(He’s) definitely a crazy shooter,” Kentucky sophomore forward Andrija Jelavic said. “You will have to basically have a guy focus on him the whole game. … He’s obviously going to take some shots. He’s going to obviously take some 3s. But the goal is to make those 3s as hard as it gets and as contested as it gets and make him drive, make him do something else other than shooting.”
Kentucky will hope to continue the defensive success it enjoyed at the end of its dramatic overtime opening win over Santa Clara on Friday afternoon. The Cats changed their ball-screen coverage in the second half of that game, after junior forward Brandon Garrison successfully persuaded Pope to shift to a switching defensive style.
That meant Kentucky’s bigs were matched onto Santa Clara’s guards, a move that ultimately paid off. In Friday’s decisive overtime, Santa Clara made just three of its 10 shots from the field.
Pope specifically discussed the physicality that will be required to contain Momcilovic, who’s listed at 225 pounds. This puts players like Dioubate, Garrison and Jelavic in a spot where they need to make their size count.
“Knowing that we’ve got a guy, BG, playing his best basketball right now. Him being able to switch on guards and still be able to guard bigs gives us a lot of confidence,” Dioubate said.
Of course, a big man won’t always be the matchup for Kentucky on Momcilovic. That responsibility will fall, at times, to UK’s guards and wings, who could be giving up three or four inches in height to Momcilovic.
“You’ve got to hit him in a bunch of different ways,” Pope said of the plan to stop Momcilovic. “You’d like to be there where he doesn’t get any rhythm. Like, you’d like to take away his rhythm as much as you can. … Any chance you have to kind of disrupt his flow is going to be really, really important.”
Momcilovic knows this is coming.
“They like to switch, (sometimes) they don’t like to switch. So I guess we’ve kinda got to see what they do to me,” he said. “If they stay connected with me or if they don’t. If they stay connected with me, I’ve just got to treat it like how Arizona guarded me, because they just put a guy close to me the whole game. But if they switch, then I’ll have to just cut well, move, slip screens and do all that.”
For the season, opponents are shooting just 31.8% from deep against the Cats. But that figure has spiked for the best teams on UK’s schedule. Combined, high-major opponents and Santa Clara have converted on 33.6% of their 3-point tries (220 for 655) against Pope’s program. Iowa State’s 38.9% team success rate on threes this season is the seventh-best mark nationally.
This sets a clear matchup for Kentucky to be cognizant of with a spot in the Sweet 16 on the line.
“Of course all the guys will have matchup assignments, but also the communication is going to be key,” Pope said. “Us being solid in ball protection is going to be key. Us being good on the glass is going to be key because he’s so functional off earning threes off offensive rebounds and off cuts and in transition. It’ll be an individual and team effort.”
