Kentucky came out with the win, but Mark Pope still wants to see better 3-point percentages

Kentucky didn’t need the three-point shot to fall during Saturday’s 90-89 overtime win against No. 7 Gonzaga. Finishing with just a 7-25 mark from beyond the arc, the Wildcats found most of its offense in the paint or at the free throw line. Of Kentucky’s 90 points, 48 came from within the paint and 15 more came from the stripe.

In the postgame press conference, Mark Pope preached about Kentucky’s willingness to cut against the Gonzaga defense, a point of emphasis he put on his team since the loss to Clemson on Tuesday. They executed that beautifully against Gonzaga and it paid off with a win.

But Kentucky’s poor three-point shooting has become a four-game trend now after a blazing-hot start from deep through the first five games. UK converted 42.3 percent of its 29.8 three-point attempts five games into the season, reaching double-digit makes in all of them. Over the last four? Those numbers have dipped down to just a 27.1 percent clip on 26.8 attempts per outing without more than eight makes in any of them.

“We will get to that. We got to fix that,” Pope said about Kentucky’s outside shooting. “That’s gonna be a really important part of our agenda, but we have it in us. We’re learning, and the process we’re in right now, is we’re gonna grow. We’re gonna keep getting better and better and better.”

Kentucky was able to pull out the win against Gonzaga without excellent three-point shooting, but that won’t always be the case moving forward. This team’s ceiling can only be reached when the outside looks are falling consistently. But here’s the good news: Kentucky continues to prove it can win in different ways. That’s what the best teams do.

“I was massively encouraged today by us learning how we can punish — just seeing some of the fruit of these guys work the last couple days, about learning how you can punish teams that really push out on you,” Pope said. “It was actually terrific.”

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