Should UK fans have a counter-intuitive worry about Mark Pope’s 2025-26 Cats?
The one thing you figure never to have to worry about with a Mark Pope-coached basketball team is the offense.
Pope showed his offensive acumen in the five seasons (2019-2024) he spent coaching at BYU. During that stint, the Cougars ranked in the top 50 in adjusted offensive efficiency in the Pomeroy Ratings four times, finished in the top 25 three times and inside the top 15 twice.
Last winter, in Pope’s first season as top Cat, UK finished 10th in adjusted offensive efficiency. The Wildcats were seventh in the nation in scoring (84.4 points a game), 20th in assists (16.9 a contest) and 21st in fast-break points (14.03 a game).
The five-out offensive approach that Pope deploys helped the injury-plagued Cats go 24-12 and led Kentucky to the NCAA Tournament round of 16 for the first time since 2019.
Against that back drop — plus Wednesday’s news that UK leading scorer Otega Oweh has withdrawn from the 2025 NBA draft to play his senior season as a Cat — the main question about the 2025-26 roster Pope has constructed seems wildly counter-intuitive:
Is there enough offensive skill on the 14-man Kentucky roster Pope has assembled for next season to reach the heights to which a Final Four-starved UK fan base aspires?
Only two players slated to wear Kentucky blue and white next season have ever averaged double figures in scoring in college basketball. Oweh led UK a season ago with an average of 16.2 points a game. Transfer point guard Jaland Lowe averaged 16.8 points last year for Pittsburgh.
The relative lack of proven offensive production on the 2025-26 Kentucky roster stands in stark contrast to the team Pope assembled on the fly for 2024-25 after he inherited a UK program last spring that had no returning scholarship players.
Of the nine players Pope signed out of the transfer portal prior to last season, seven had averaged in double figures in scoring for their college teams during the previous year.
On paper, the 2025-26 Cats seem to have a higher athletic ceiling than did last season’s Wildcats. However, there is more reason to feel uncertain about Kentucky’s offensive floor entering the coming season than there was going into last year.
To find offensive answers beyond Oweh and Lowe in the coming season, UK will have multiple paths down which it can explore.
In rising sophomores-to-be Jayden Quiantance and Kam Williams, Kentucky boasts two players who just missed averaging in double figures in scoring last year as freshmen. Playing at Arizona State, Quaintance averaged 9.4 points, while Williams scored 9.3 points a contest for Tulane.
Incoming SEC transfers Mo Dioubate (7.2 ppg last season at Alabama) and Denzel Aberdeen (7.7 at Florida) played off the bench in their prior stops. It is easy to imagine both raising their offensive outputs in what are expected to be expanded roles at Kentucky.
Given a starter’s minutes, returning UK big man Brandon Garrison (5.9 ppg last season) would figure to become a more productive scorer.
It is difficult to project what level of offensive production Kentucky can expect from incoming freshmen such as highly touted guard Jasper Johnson or Croatian power forward Andrija Jelavic.
The most interesting variable in evaluating UK’s offensive potential for 2025-26 is how much can merely installing players into Pope’s system increase their production?
It is interesting to examine how last season’s transfers fared in their first seasons playing for Pope.
Of the eight transfers who formed the core of Kentucky’s 2024-25 team, only three — Oweh (plus 4.8 points a game), Lamont Butler (plus 2.1) and Koby Brea (plus 0.5) — raised their scoring averages at UK over what they had posted the prior year at their previous schools.
However, seven of the eight averaged more assists a game than they had the prior season; five raised their overall field-goal percentage; and four raised their 3-point field goal percentage.
(I did not include Kerr Kriisa’s numbers in these tabulations due to the small sample size available since he played only nine games last season for Kentucky due to injury).
Although there does not appear to be a 3-point shooter with Brea’s pedigree (a 43.4 percent shooter from behind the arc over his five-year college career) on the coming season’s Kentucky roster, five of the 10 players with prior college experience on the 2025-26 Cats shot better than 35 percent last year on treys, and two others were above 33 percent.
Put it all together, Kentucky backers should have some concern about the offensive uncertainties UK will bring into the 2025-26 season.
Based on Pope’s track record as a head coach, there is also reason for optimism that the Cats will find positive resolution to those concerns.
