Several Kentucky players have the "green light" to shoot

At least early on in the season, Kentucky head coach John Calipari will embrace a small-ball lineup. He doesn’t have any other choice, really. As mentioned ad nauseam, the Wildcats are down all three of their seven-footers and the timeline for any of their returns remains murky. It’s going to make for some challenges when it comes to defending the rim, but it sure is going to make this Kentucky team a hell of a lot of fun to watch.

During Kentucky’s 99-53 exhibition win over Kentucky State on Thursday night, the ‘Cats shot 10-25 from beyond the arc for a clean 40 percent mark. Antonio Reeves and Tre Mitchell made a combined seven triples while DJ Wagner and Justin Edwards chipped in three more between them. As a team, Kentucky assisted on 25 of 37 made shots. As we saw in Toronto over the summer, this group knows how to move the ball and find open shooters.

That’s going to be the theme for the foreseeable future — even once the bigs do come back. With so many good shooters on this roster, it should be the focus. Calipari is encouraging his guys to fire when open because he knows those shots are going to come around eventually. They pass too well for it not to be the case. With that in mind, Calipari has given several of his players the “green light” to let it fly.

“DJ, Rob (Dillingham), I’ll be honest with you, Reed (Sheppard), Antonio, Tre if he’s open,” Calipari said when asked who has the green light to shoot. “And, basically — even like Adou (Thiero) I thought passed up a couple of jumpers to get to the rim.

“But this is one of those teams, like Shai (Gilgeous-Alexander) said, watching us in Toronto, every guy can pass, dribble, and shoot, so it leaves you to play a little different; you know, what we’re running. We were random some of the time and you have to admit, it was like wow. We were random, we had great pace, we got to the next action.”

Calipari doesn’t want his shooters just firing up shots to get them up. There’s a method behind it: keep the ball moving and make the defense work in order to get the best possible shot available. Even though Kentucky is loaded with inexperienced freshmen who were all the best players on their high school teams, they have shown the ability to play unselfishly. That style of play typically results in open shots.

“That’s something you have to credit to the individual player,” Mitchell said postgame. “There’s a lot of players out there that are not gonna move the ball the way that some of these young dudes move the ball, and it’s impressive. It’s really impressive. I think it’s a sign of their maturity and their understanding of the game. They notice the talent that’s next to them and I think that when you see the talent that’s around you, it’s a lot easier to give up that ball.”

Could this group be a team that shoots 25-plus three-pointers per game? As long as the lineups feature three top-level shooters on the floor (or sometimes more) at the same time and limited size in the frontcourt, they might have to at least try. They have the willingness to create those shots and Calipari wants them to go up.

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