Kentucky's ball screen defense is 'better than it was against Ohio State' but still work in progress

Kentucky was picked apart through ball screen action by Ohio State when the Buckeyes embarrassed the Wildcats 85-65 in New York City. Head coach Mark Pope has wasted zero time trying to fix the issue following that loss on Dec. 21. It’s been a huge priority for the players and the staff in practice and continues to be an area they work on regularly.

Progress defending ball screens has been made over the last several weeks. Pope was impressed with what he saw in that regard in Kentucky’s first game after the Ohio State loss, an 88-54 win over Brown after a 10-day holiday break. But Brown isn’t on par with the talent in the SEC. Ball screen defense has remained an issue for the Wildcats against conference foes. It popped up again during Kentucky’s most recent loss to Alabama last weekend.

“It’s better than it was against Ohio State,” Pope said Thursday of UK’s ball screen defense. “So that’s positive. As a general philosophy, what we like to do is have people take mid-range twos, right? That’s what all the numbers say, and that’s where you’re trying to live.”

The Crimson Tide is one of the few (maybe only) teams in the country that can straight-up outscore a hot-shooting Kentucky team. That’s what happened last Saturday in Rupp Arena as Alabama won 102-97. It didn’t matter what UK did on offense, Nate Oats‘ team had more than enough offensive counters of its own. Part of that was a result of Alabama slicing Kentucky up in ball screen action.

In Pope’s own words, Kentucky prefers to defend ball screens by dropping back into coverage. He’ll mix in some blitzing off the pick-and-roll with plenty of switching. Some of that is dependent on the other team’s personnel. As he mentioned, the goal is to induce teams into shooting long twos. Kentucky hasn’t been great at doing that, ranking in the bottom 35th percentile, per Synergy, in categories such as two-point jump shot defense and pick-and-roll defense.

Should Kentucky try to bring more pressure off these pick-and-rolls through blitzes, hedges, and/or traps? Would that be too taxing on the Wildcats’ big men? Having to pressure beyond the perimeter and quickly recover on defense takes a ton of energy, which the likes of Amari Williams and Brandon Garrison need to help operate the offense on the other end and fuel UK’s fastbreak opportunities.

These are some of the conversations Pope and his staff have likely already discussed.

“There’s just so many ways that you’re trying to kind of manage ball screens, and then trying to do it in live play, as situations arise,” Pope said. “Sometimes that’s the beautiful challenge, right? Can you do it without a timeout? Can you make an adjustment on the fly? Can you do it personnel-wise? So it’s a major component of the game.”

Kentucky won’t magically jump 50 spots in the defensive rankings no matter what changes and tweaks are made over the next month or two. They might just be what they are. That’s not necessarily a bad thing either. Three of Kentucky’s four losses this season have come when they scored under 70 points. If the offense is cooking, UK will beat just anybody — no matter what happens on defense. It will take an opposing offense like Alabama’s to make it matter and there aren’t many out there better than the Tide.

Pope will continue to toy with ball screen schemes as the season goes along. Any notable improvement moving forward would be massive for Kentucky’s upcoming postseason run. But UK is hardly alone in struggling to stop pick-and-roll offense.

“It’s something that everybody wrestles with and everybody’s trying to get better at,” Pope said.

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