Kentucky is getting beat at its own game through a lack of 3-point volume

In the preseason, Mark Pope set a goal for his first Kentucky team to average 30 three-pointers per game. Now 22 games into the season, the Wildcats have failed to reach that mark. They haven’t exactly been close, either.

Following Tuesday night’s 98-84 road loss to Ole Miss, Kentucky is attempting 26.8 shots from beyond the arc per game. Make no mistake, that’s still a high number — Top 60 in the country, actually. UK is hitting those shots at an efficient rate of 38 percent, too (and an even better 42 percent in SEC games).

42.5 percent of the Wildcats’ overall shot attempts this season have come from long range. It’s resulted in the nation’s second-best offense, per KenPom.

But when the defense is playing as poorly as it is as of late (and all season long, to an extent), which has been made even worse without the presence of starting point guard Lamont Butler, Kentucky has to find ways to shoot even more.

“There’s a bunch of things that are frustrating about that,” Pope said postgame when asked why Kentucky can’t reach that threshold of 30 three-pointers per game. “One, it’s a credit to Ole Miss, of course, always first. Two, for us, it’s a struggle to find ways to get downhill. They’re switching defense contributes to that. Our lack of pace right now has been a little bit troublesome for us.”

Having a downhill driver like Butler or a pace-enhancer like Kerr Kriisa, who also remains sidelined, would help solve some of that. Kentucky doesn’t have enough penetrators for an abundance of drive and kick options, or enough ball handlers to push the pace every other possession. Good three-pointers such as Jaxson Robinson and Koby Brea are having to play with the ball in their hands more than usual instead of spotting up.

But at the same time, Kentucky was struggling to reach 30 three-pointers per game even when Butler and Kriisa were healthy and playing. Robinson has been red-hot from deep since league play began as the primary ball handler.

The bigger issue is Pope is getting beat at his own game. Opposing SEC teams are attempting a league-high 32.7 three-pointers per game compared to 25.7 per contest for the ‘Cats. Part of Kentucky’s defensive scheme is to let bad shooters fire from deep. But when shooters are being left so wide open, as has been the case with UK, the percentages unsurprisingly soar. SEC opponents are shooting 33.9 percent from three against Kentucky, a decent number, but the amount of makes (100 in nine conference games) is the troubling part.

“With that said, where we’re really feeling the onus of issue right now is trying to figure out this defensive side of the ball,” Pope added.

Kentucky has been daring bad shooters to hit open looks, and it hasn’t been paying off. Ole Miss shot 13-30 (43.3%) from deep. Arkansas went 13-25 from beyond the arc over the weekend in what was the Razorbacks’ best shooting performance of the season. UK has allowed 10 or more three-point makes in seven of nine SEC games.

It’s hard to generate 3-5 more three-pointers per game when the defense can’t finish possessions, turn and run in transition, or pick up some cheap steals. The room for error right now just isn’t all that large.

“We’ve played against two teams back-to-back now where their bigs really have shot it tremendously well against us,” Pope said. “That’s problematic for us. The solutions are complicated sometimes. I’m doing a poor job of finding the right ones.”

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