Mark Pope sees similarities in Kentucky's offense compared to Missouri: 'They've been terrific.'

Missouri head coach Dennis Gates didn’t win a single SEC game last season (0-18), his second as head coach of the Tigers. Despite being projected to finish among the bottom of the league coming into year three, he currently has No. 15 Missouri (21-9) sitting comfortably in the NCAA Tournament mix. The Chicago native is likely to receive a handful of Coach of the Year votes for what he’s done this season in Columbia.

“I’m really happy for him because I’m a huge fan of (Gates),” Kentucky head coach Mark Pope said Thursday. “I think it’s one of the great stories in college basketball, is how they’ve responded.”

Pope and his Wildcats will have a chance to add a tragic chapter to that story when the two teams collide this weekend. It’ll mark the second-ever head-to-head battle between Pope and Gates, the first a 69-59 victory for Pope’s BYU team over Gates’ Cleveland State squad in the 2021-22 season-opener. There’s a mutual respect between these head coaches, and a mutual understanding of each other’s offenses.

“There are some similarities (to Kentucky),” Pope said when asked about Missouri’s offense. “We run a lot of the same actions offensively, we kind of value spacing in the same way offensively.”

According to KenPom, Missouri and Kentucky are neck-and-neck in the adjusted offensive efficiency stat. The Tigers rank fifth nationally at 126.3 with the Wildcats right behind in sixth at 125.2. Both teams shoot a ton of threes at a high efficiency, don’t turn the ball over all that often, and like to push the pace.

But a key difference is Missouri’s ability to generate steals (seventh in the country in steal percentage at 13.9, per KenPom), which kickstarts their transition offense. The Tigers average 18 points off turnovers per outing, per CBBAnalytics, which ranks in the 98th percentile among Division I teams.

“Almost 22 percent of their possessions are in transition,” Pope said of Missouri. “And they’re a really, really high-level steals team. They’re one of the best steals teams in the country. But if you kind of dig deeper in the numbers, their transition is still prolific, even if you take out the steals numbers. So they’re pushing in transition really hard.”

Transition offense is only part of the gameplan though. Against SEC competition, Missouri has a trio of sharpshooters (Caleb Grill, Tamar Bates, and Jacob Crews) making over 35 percent of their outside shots while taking more than three per game. The Tigers get to the free throw line more than any SEC team. 6-foot-8 forward Mark Mitchell is a load offensively at 14.2 points per conference game while shooting 53.4 percent on two-pointers.

“They have incredibly capable shooters that are dangerous,” Pope said. “They have really dangerous perimeter players. They’ve got a non-traditional starting five, four, who’s unbelievable in iso. He’s coming off more ball screens than any big in our conference, for sure. He’s really, really effective at it. They have an ability to kind of focus in on some places they want to attack, and come back to them over and over and over again. I think Coach Gates does a great job. Dennis does a great job with that. They’re a really well-constructed roster.”

Kentucky’s defense has dramatically improved over the last month, but we could be in for an offensive war Saturday in Columbia.

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