Kentucky's defense stymied against modern basketball

Kentucky’s offensive ineptitude this season has been well-documented. A system that represented pique basketball at both the collegiate and professional levels 15 years ago now looks antiquated in 2023. Spacing and shooting usurped isolation and dribble penetration around the time Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors created an NBA dynasty by shooting nothing but layups and 3-pointers.

At this point, the opinion that Kentucky needs an offensive makeover is as drab as the team’s sole inbounds play. It is a take as lazy as the screens set by any given Kentucky player on any given possession. National writers have highlighted it. Opposing coaches have anonymously whispered it. Film enthusiasts have documented it. And lowly bloggers have mused creative solutions to it.

However, there is a less-obvious impact of not playing that modern basketball that has shone through in Kentucky’s recent embarrassing losses to Alabama and Missouri. Simply put, Kentucky struggles to defend against contemporary offense because they don’t run it themselves. They don’t see it in practice, so how can they execute against it in games?

It is similar to the hypothesis that one of the reasons Kentucky looks sluggish against a zone defense is because of Calipari’s emphatic refusal to implement it himself. Sure, they practice against it to an extent, but the 2-3 zone has been around for ages, and Cal runs the same blueprint to break it found in basketball coaching books written in the 1980s. Don’t get me started on the 1-3-1.

Modern basketball, as you might have guessed by its name, has not been around very long. There isn’t a VHS tape Cal can pop and learn how John Wooden broke it down. Evolution is the only solution.

Alabama made Kentucky look clueless

KSR’s Jack Pilgrim tweeted out a telling stat from the Alabama game on Saturday. Of the 26 made field goals against Kentucky, only one was not a dunk, layup, or 3-pointer. Juxtapose that with Kentucky. Out of 21 made field goals, there were only three layups, one dunk, and five 3s.

Quick math tells you 96% of Bama’s buckets were at the rim or from behind the arc, compared to only 43% for the ‘Cats. Not to pile on with hypotheticals, but ignoring the two Antonio Reeves 3-pointers in the final 30 seconds of garbage time dips that number to 37%.

If you want an oversimplistic breakdown of how Kentucky plays compared to how today’s most successful teams operate, look no further than that statistic. How can Kentucky successfully defend against something it has such limited ability to emulate in practice?

Is it possible to play effective defense against an offense in which you do not employ yourself? Of course. Nate Oats had no trouble shutting down Kentucky’s prehistoric approach to scoring and Alabama certainly does not run the dribble-drive with no spacing.

Kentucky has the talent capable of defending any type of basketball, but the players and coaching staff have got to be more in tune with contemporary offensive sets before they can defend against them with greater success, as the team saw a comparable outcome at Missouri.

After the Alabama drubbing, Calipari said he might not watch the tape. Perhaps it might be more prudent to dissect how Alabama systematically got whatever it wanted, whenever it wanted. If playing a similar style of offense is not something Cal is willing to adopt, then at least assign an assistant to learn it well enough to slow it down in the future, because Kentucky will most certainly see it again.