UK basketball has produced an elite offense with young players. Future Cats have noticed.
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Game day: No. 17 Kentucky 109, Vanderbilt 77
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Tuesday’s men’s basketball game between Kentucky and Vanderbilt at Memorial Gymnasium in Nashville, Tennessee.
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For all the defensive woes that have plagued the Kentucky basketball team this season, it can’t be disputed that the Wildcats have put together an elite offensive campaign.
Through 22 games, John Calipari’s team has scored the ball at an impressive rate, and done so with the vast majority of its roster being first-year college players.
Following Tuesday night’s big 109-77 road win at Vanderbilt, here’s a quick glance at some of UK’s most impressive offensive metrics:
▪ Second in the nation in points per game (89.7).
▪ Second in the nation in 3-point shooting percentage (41.1%).
▪ Fifth in the nation in adjusted offensive efficiency, per KenPom.
▪ Three freshman players averaging 12 or more points per game.
▪ 72.6 adjusted tempo rating, which per KenPom ranks 13th in the nation.
Kentucky’s high-flying offense has been a common talking point in national college hoops discourse this season. And it has also resonated with future UK players.
“I love it. That’s all I can say right now. I love it,” UK guard signee Boogie Fland told the Herald-Leader in January at the Hoophall Classic about Kentucky’s style of play.
“(Kentucky) fits my game style. I just fell in love with it the first day I was out there,” Billy Richmond, a 6-foot-5 wing who committed to Kentucky in December, said at the same event.
Richmond said watching the way UK has used so many young guards this season has given him a lot of confidence before he becomes a Wildcat.
“You don’t really get to see a lot of big guards. The last big guard you’ve probably seen was Cade Cunningham (listed at 6-foot-8 during his lone season at Oklahoma State) in college,” Richmond said. “So I just try to look at his film, see what he does and take notes from him. So, just playing that role.”
“(Kentucky) just likes to run the floor,” Richmond added. “I do that very well. … I’m really excited. It gives me a lot of opportunities to score, because that’s where I usually get my points from, a lot of fast breaks. I’m just looking forward to that.”
While fifth-year players Tre Mitchell and Antonio Reeves have proved to be indispensable parts of this season’s UK team, plenty of important contributions have come from the members of Kentucky’s star-studded 2023 recruiting class.
Memorable individual performances from these freshmen — such as Reed Sheppard’s 21 points off the bench against Miami (Fla.), Aaron Bradshaw’s clutch second half at Florida, D.J. Wagner’s double-double against Georgia and Rob Dillingham’s 35 points against Tennessee (part of his current, three-game offensive heater) — have highlighted the Wildcats’ season.
Moments like these have also had a strong impact on Richmond, who was teammates at Camden (New Jersey) High School last season with both Bradshaw and Wagner.
There’s also legit reasons to believe Richmond’s style of play will fit in at Kentucky.
“Richmond’s greatest strengths on the court right now boil down to his tools and his slashing,” Zach Welch, an analyst for Pro Insight Basketball, told the Herald-Leader. “He possesses great open-court speed, burst and explosiveness.”
Future Kentucky basketball players excited by UK’s success with youth
Kentucky’s success with so many first-year college players has been a common discussion point in the group chat featuring each of UK’s five commits for next season: the aforementioned Fland and Richmond, along with in-state guard Travis Perry and centers Somto Cyril and Jayden Quaintance.
“(It’s) very exciting,” Fland said of watching young Kentucky guards shine this season. “… We were actually texting. All of us (2024 commits). The guys have been texting, just trying to create a bond.”
What does Fland already know about the other Kentucky commits that he will soon go through the rigors of a college basketball season with?
“They’re dogs,” Fland said. “We’re coming in here and we’re ready.”
That description is particularly apt for Fland, who was one of two Kentucky commits (along with Quaintance) named a McDonald’s All-American last month.
“His ability to create space for himself and drain shots off balance and off movement is particularly impressive,” Welch, the Pro Insight Basketball analyst, said of Fland.
That Kentucky has succeeded — to an extent — this season with eight scholarship freshmen isn’t something that’s lost on the UK coaching staff either.
“I know we’re very talented, but we’re doing something that nobody thought that we could do: Win with freshmen,” Bruiser Flint, Kentucky’s associate to the head coach, said Monday morning. “Because nobody else is winning with freshmen in the country. And we are.”
While that statement isn’t exactly true — teams like Baylor (Yves Missi and Ja’Kobe Walter), Duke (Jared McCain) and Washington State (Myles Rice) also boast top freshmen this season — the quantity of first-year players on the roster, along with Kentucky’s reliance on them, certainly makes the Wildcats an outlier nationally.
And it seems likely that UK will run back this roster construction style for next season.
UK’s most experienced players — Mitchell and Reeves — are both out of college eligibility. Underclassmen like sophomore Ugonna Onyenso have also gotten some NBA draft buzz.
Kentucky can count on those five aforementioned commits to be freshmen in Lexington next season, and that number could easily grow to six with small forward Karter Knox still on the table and strongly considering the Wildcats.
But for all the good that Kentucky’s young players have provided offensively this season — a freshman has led UK in scoring in exactly half of its games (11 of 22 contests) this season — the Cats have also had big issues on the defensive end.
From blown assignments on out-of-bounds plays to a general inability to stop opponents from scoring, Kentucky has experienced significant growing pains this season with its young players on defense.
UK currently ranks 104th in the nation in adjusted defensive efficiency, per KenPom.
“You have those situations with young players,” Flint said. “You struggle with it sometimes, because honestly, they’re not used to it. … You have those games where, you know what, your attention to detail has got to be better, because those other guys, they play with a lot of older players, and they actually pay attention to the details.”
“And those guys come out with a little bit more intensity. Because they get it. Because they’ve been in a hundred basketball games, and you haven’t.”
Whether Kentucky basketball’s newcomers next season can fare better on the defensive end than this current group of Wildcats remains to be seen. That’s a future issue for Calipari and his coaching staff to tackle.
But as the 2023-24 Kentucky season enters its home stretch, UK’s offense continues to show a road map for potential success next season with another large group of first-year players on the way.
This story was originally published February 7, 2024 at 7:00 AM.
