Kentucky shot its most 3s in a game since 2011 in win over Texas A&M

Shoot ’em all, Kentucky.

During the Wildcats’ 76-67 win over Texas A&M on Saturday afternoon, UK attempted 32 shots from behind the 3-point line for just the fifth time in the John Calipari era and the first since 2011. While UK only converted on 11 of those looks for a percentage of 34.4 percent, it was a necessary change in offensive approach against the Aggies and ultimately led to the ‘Cats locking up its third straight win.

Antonio Reeves, who finished with a season-high 23 points, was the star, connecting on five of his 11 attempts. Chris Livingston, who came into this matchup just 9-27 from deep on the season, was a perfect 2-2, with both makes coming within 60 seconds of each other. Jacob Toppin even canned a wide-open look for just his sixth made triple of the year.

A combined clip of 3-17 between Cason Wallace (1-7) and CJ Fredrick (2-10) wasn’t ideal, but there wasn’t a bad look among the bunch. Shooters need to keep shooting when open, and that allowed Kentucky to spread the floor and dominate the offensive glass to the tune of a 17-4 advantage.

“We’re a team that if you play us this way, we’ll take the threes,” Calipari said after UK beat Texas A&M. “If you’re leaving people, we’ll take them.”

Kentucky was taking excellent shots and made the ones that needed to fall the most. The team was up to 21 attempts from long distance by halftime, which would have been the most across an entire game since the loss to Missouri on Dec. 28.

“Took more threes in the first half than most of my teams take in a game, but I looked, they were all open,” Calipari added. “They were open. So, you’ve got to shoot it.”

According to UK statistician Corey Price, this was the fifth time a Calipari-coached Kentucky squad attempted at least 32 shots from distance, but more notably, this was the first time it happened in over a decade. The previous four instances all came between 2010 and 2011, leading to a 3-1 record (now 4-1 after Saturday) in those outings with the lone loss coming in the infamous Elite 8 loss to West Virginia during Calipari’s first year in Lexington.

John Calipari bantering with reporters about history behind Kentucky's 32 3-point attempts — the most since 2011. Two other examples before then.

Assumed his teams lost with four-ish makes in those. Told they were all blowout wins.

"I guess we should be shooting more threes."

— Jack Pilgrim (@JackPilgrimKSR) January 21, 2023

Here’s the more important stat though: Kentucky is now 55-4 under Calipari when making at least 10 three-pointers in a single game. UK hit that number four times before Saturday this season, but all of them came early in the schedule against non-Power 5 competition. Whether that’s an indicator of what’s to come the rest of the season is still up in the air, though — Texas A&M’s game plan from the opening tip was to give Kentucky shots from deep if it meant taking the ball out of Oscar Tshiebwe‘s hands and making someone else beat you.

Mission accomplished, but not in the category that matters the most: the final score.

Tshiebwe finished with just seven points (plus 17 rebounds, an important note) on 3-5 shooting. Granted, foul trouble limited him to only 29 minutes, but the Aggies made it a point to double- and triple-team the reigning national player of the year from the moment the ball was in the air and headed his way.

It took Tshiebwe until the last 10 or so minutes of the second half to exploit what Texas A&M was throwing at him, but once he did, Kentucky never looked back. Reeves hit the biggest three of the afternoon with 8:29 left in the game, breaking a 53-53 tie and putting the ‘Cats ahead for good.

“We expected it. The way they play defense, as soon as someone posts the ball, the weakside guy is doubling or in the lane, so if you have two people on the corner wing, somebody is open,” Kentucky junior forward Lance Ware said of Texas A&M’s defensive game plan. “Like (Calipari) said we shot 32 threes. We never shoot 32 threes and it’s probably one of the most amount of threes his teams have taken in a game. But if you look at the film, none of them were contested. Like everyone was wide open so it was shots you had to take.”

Having multiple shooters on the floor at the same time sure does help the cause, too.

It got to a point down the stretch where Tshiebwe would receive the ball in the post and didn’t even consider looking at the rim for his own shot. He knew Texas A&M was bringing help and was already one step ahead, planning his pass before he had the ball in his hands. While Tshiebwe only recorded one assist, those preplanned passes on the block led to beautiful ball movement for Kentucky, creating open look after open look from deep.

As Calipari loves to say, you don’t have to make them all, but you certainly can’t miss them all. Double-digit made threes have historically proved to be enough for UK, and that was the case again on Saturday.

“You watched the game, were they open? Yeah. Some of them we missed; did you go, how in the world did he miss that? Because they’re not machines and they’re not robots, and there’s sometimes they miss two, it’s like, the next guy misses and the next guy — it’s contagious,” Calipari said.

“But the other side of it is we had the courage to keep shooting. CJ, Antonio, they had the courage to keep shooting. How about Chris’s two? How about Cason is 0 for 4? He’s 0 for 7 at halftime. 0 for 7, 0 for 4 from the three, but he came back and banged that one at the top, which was a big play.”

Don’t expect Kentucky to shoot upwards of 30 threes on a regular basis, but the ‘Cats have shown they can win games in multiple ways over the last couple of weeks. Come tournament time, that will be a valuable trait.