Mark Pope encouraging a 3-point barrage: 'If you don't shoot the ball, you're gonna sit'

Mark Pope‘s 2023-24 BYU squad was known for firing up as many three-pointers as possible. The Cougars ranked second in all of college basketball in three-pointers attempted at 32 per game, hitting those long-range looks at a 34.8 percent clip.

Since his hiring in April, we’ve heard the new Kentucky head coach mention multiple times how that strategy will follow him to Lexington. And when you look at the players he’s pulled to Lexington ahead of year one, you quickly understand why. Of the 12 scholarship players on the 2024-25 roster, only three of them have hit under 34 percent from deep throughout their college careers (or in the case of the three freshmen, their high school careers).

Those three are Lamont Butler (32.1 percent), Amari Williams (30.8 percent), and Brandon Garrison (0 attempts). But that trio was brought to Kentucky primarily for defensive purposes. The other nine are all considered average to above-average outside shooters. A couple of them might even fall into the elite category. Which means we’re going to see a similar style on the hardwood to what Pope (and John Calipari’s final team at Kentucky) did last season: shoot the hell out of the ball.

“It’s kind of different for a lot of us to get used to a coach being like, yes, shoot,” Wake Forest transfer Andrew Carr said on Thursday. “We want you to shoot the three as much as possible. So I think it’s even an adjustment for us as players to know that the coaches, not only do they believe in us, but that’s a really good shot for the team. And you have to take that shot because it’s a really good shot for the team.”

For Carr personally, the 6-foot-9 stretch forward hit 37.1 of his three-pointers last season on 97 total attempts. One of his main focuses (which is being encouraged by the coaching staff) going into 2024-25 is getting the number of attempts well into the triple digits. With how fast Pope wants to advance the ball in transition or after a defensive stop, there shouldn’t be much of an issue firing up three after three for Carr or any of the other slew of shooters at his side.

“If you wanna guard us, you’re gonna have to be in shape,” Otega Oweh, who shot 37.7 percent from deep as a sophomore at Oklahoma on limited volume, told reporters.

“I think it’ll be really, really cool just to be able to play super fast and have the freedom aggressively to be aggressive as early as possible in the clock,” Carr added. “We always talk about getting the ball over the court in the first three seconds. It’s a really fun way to play and not many coaches are telling you, if you don’t shoot the ball, you’re gonna sit next to me.”

There shouldn’t be a shortage of options to make this happen, either. Let’s quickly rank each Kentucky player’s career three-point percentage going into this season:

• Koby Brea: 43.3%
• Trent Noah: 43% (2023-24 at Harlan County)
• Travis Perry: 41.7% (2023-24 at Lyon County)
• Ansley Almonor: 38.5%
• Collin Chandler: 37% (2019-22 at Farmington)
• Kerr Kriisa: 36.8%
• Otega Oweh: 36.8%
• Andrew Carr: 34.4%
• Jaxson Robinson: 34.3%
• Lamont Butler: 32.1%
• Amari Williams: 30.8%
• Brandon Garrison: N/A

AVERAGE: 37.2%

Granted, the average percentage can be a bit deceiving considering it doesn’t account for shot volume, but it speaks to the overall point: most of these guys have found success shooting the ball from distance. And now they have near-unlimited freedom to let it fly in an offense built to do just that.

“It’s not just on paper, it’s in real life too. We really got a lot of shooters. That’s something (Pope) emphasizes every day in practice,” Fairleigh Dickinson transfer Ansley Almonor said. “He makes everybody take a lot of threes, lot of shots, make sure we’re perfecting our craft and that’s something he emphasizes a lot as a key to how we’re gonna play this year, how we’re gonna beat teams. We’re gonna take a lot of threes and we’re gonna make a lot of threes.”

Sounds like a fun brand of basketball to me.

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