Kellan Grady's career at Kentucky comes to an unfortunate end

Once regarded as the most lethal 3-pointer shooter in the Southeastern Conference — and possibly the country — Kellan Grady oddly lost his hot shooting touch down the stretch of his final collegiate season.

The fifth-year graduate student and former Davidson transfer shot just 6-30 from beyond the arc over Kentucky’s previous seven games, including a 1-7 mark in the Wildcats’ opening-round overtime loss in the 2022 NCAA Tournament to the Saint Peter’s Peacocks. That’s just 20 percent during the most critical stretch of the season for a player that was heavily relied upon to open up the floor for Kentucky’s offense, particularly so Oscar Tshiebwe could do his work in the paint.

In the 27 games he played before his recent slump, Grady was shooting an unbelievable 45.1 percent on nearly seven attempts per outing. He drilled 7-9 from distance against Alabama back in the middle of February, but that would be the last time all season he’d catch fire. Grady’s sudden inability to knock down an outside shot wasn’t the only reason Kentucky failed to reach its peak heading into March, but it sure didn’t help. Kentucky posted a 4-3 record during his rough patch, concluding with an early exit from the postseason.

“If I bang a couple and I was myself the last couple games, we probably would have won them,” Grady said after the loss to Saint Peter’s. “I’m not trying to escape that accountability. I shot like crap again tonight. It’s unfortunate.

“If I could pinpoint it exactly, I wouldn’t have shot like crap. You know, I feel — this is such a close group and we have gone through a lot this year, and we’ve accomplished a lot, and today would have been — it would have been good for us to get a win, and you know, I feel bad that I couldn’t help in better fashion to help us win. But it is what it is.”

Kellan Grady: "If I was myself the last few games, we probably would've won them. I shot like crap again."

— Jack Pilgrim (@JackPilgrimKSR) March 18, 2022

From the outside looking in, it appears that Grady got far too deep into his own head. Kentucky head coach John Calipari said postgame that he had to bench Grady multiple times throughout the game against Saint Peter’s because he was refusing to shoot the ball. That had become an untimely trend over the last couple of weeks, where Grady’s hesitation either took away a good look or caused him to side-step his way into a contested one.

Kentucky’s most dangerous outside weapon was suddenly nowhere to be found.

That being said, Grady didn’t get much help elsewhere. Oscar Tshiebwe’s 30 points and 16 rebounds were the only reason UK made it to an extra period against Saint Peter’s. Aside from the National Player of the Year frontrunner, the ‘Cats shot just 15-45 (33.3 percent) combined as a team. The blame can’t be placed solely on Grady’s shoulders.

“Kellan does a lot for us shooting the ball. None of us really made shots, so I don’t think that’s something that you can put on him,” Kentucky forward Keion Brooks Jr. said in defense of his teammate. “He works extremely hard every single day, like, just tonight, they didn’t go. But even beyond him and then the rest of us not making shots, it was just some plays that we didn’t make that cost us the game. Even if none of us made any shots, there were still plays that defensive or just execution-wise that we — that we weren’t great on that cost us.”

Grady’s final college game came to a close with eight points on 1-9 shooting, but he also added five rebounds and four dimes, which were both second-most amongst his teammates. He was able to get to the line a few times, which helped open up the floor a bit, too. Grady even hit the biggest shot of the night for Kentucky, his lone 3-pointer of the game that pushed the ‘Cats ahead by two with just 48 seconds left. He’d missed his previous 10 attempts from distance before that — and even one just seconds before — but rang up another bomb that dropped right in.

For a brief moment, he found some confidence, it was just too little too late.