Don't Panic, UK Fans! UK-Florida Recap
In this edition of the Kentucky Wildcats newsletter from Hoops Insight, I'm going to dive into the data for UK's loss against Florida, try to explain what went wrong, and make the case for why it's not time for UK fans to panic yet.
I crunched the numbers and went back to watch the game tape, and I think 3 things are true:
UK's poor defensive rebounding was not a major factor
UK's poor offensive rebounding was much more significant, since it let Florida fast break
UK had an abnormally bad shooting night on fast breaks/quick shots
Florida hammered UK on fast breaks due to the volume of defensive rebounds they got, and poor transition defense by UK. On the flipside, UK had their worst shooting night of the season on their fast break opportunities. Combined, these two factors alone swung the result by 24 points. Read below for my analysis and stats you won't see anywhere else.
UK's poor defensive rebounding is being overblown
Unquestionably, this was Kentucky's worst rebounding game of the year. They collected a season-low 14% of their offensive rebounding opportunities, and 58% of their defensive rebounding opportunities; these percentages are both season-lows.
Let's deal with the defensive rebounding. It's not entirely surprising that UK struggled to get defensive rebounds; UK has been no better than average at this all season long, and has a 70% defensive rebounding percentage for the year. That puts them right in the middle of all college teams. Meanwhile, Florida is in the top 40 nationally in offensive rebounding, so it's a relative strength. So, you probably wouldn't have expected UK to do much better than their season-long average in defensive rebounding, if even that.
UK had 40 opportunities to get a defensive rebound, and missed on 17 of them; even if they'd been at their season average, they would have missed on 12 or so. So, UK lost 5 chances to take the ball away from Florida. But, there's another way to take the ball away: turnovers! And it just so happens that UK was above average on that, forcing 17 turnovers (22% of Florida possessions). Florida is usually much better at avoiding turnovers, committing a turnover on 16.7% of possessions. The game was 77 possessions; the difference between 16.7% and 22% turnovers rates is a little over 4 turnovers. UK did about as well as you'd expect at taking away possessions; it's just that they did it on turnovers instead of defensive rebounds.
UK's poor offensive rebounding is a bigger issue
UK only collected 14% of the available offensive rebounds; their season low was 20% before this, and they were at 40% against Georgia. This is especially troubling because Florida has been decidedly average at defensive rebounding, and UK is among the top 30 offensive rebounding teams in the country. So, it's definitely unexpected for this game. However, the rebounds themselves didn't cause the most damage; it's what Florida was able to do with the rebounds.
Florida was able to fast break more than a typical UK opponent in this game, and UK did a poor job of defending the fast break. De'Aaron Fox and Malik Monk in particular had several possessions where they failed to stop the ball, failed to contest shots, or fouled ballhandlers. This impact shows up in the stats, as well:
UK opponents usually take 31% of their shots within 10 seconds or less of the shot clock. These are usually fast breaks, or shots very early in the offense before the defense can set up. These shots are usually high-percentage, and for the season UK opponents had a 54% eFG% on these.
Florida, however, was unbelievable on these quick shots. 44% of Florida's shots came early in the shot clock, and they posted a 72% eFG%. The 44% is driven by more defensive rebounds, and pushing the ball upcourt to get a shot. The 72% eFG% suggests they weren't just doing this haphazardly; Florida was getting good shots and hitting them.
Florida's performance in this area was quite literally game-changing. Florida took 62 shots; by taking the type of shots and hitting them as frequently as they did, they scored 70 points. If they had followed the pattern of a typical UK opponent, they would have scored 59 points on these 62 shots. That 11 point difference is half of the final margin!
Kentucky had an abnormally bad night shooting on their quick shots
As good as Florida was on the fast break, UK was just as bad. Here's the same shooting breakdown for UK:
In the section on defensive rebounding I made the case that UK's ability to force turnovers offset their issues on the defensive glass. You can see from the data above that UK actually got more quick shots than they have averaged on the season (46% vs 40%). The issue is that they had a 36% eFg% on these shots while they average 58% on the season. I went back and watched the tape and these weren't much worse shots; they didn't get a ton of open layups, but players like Fox, Briscoe, and Monk missed a lot of shots in the paint. Simply put, these issues are not likely to carry over to other games. The only other game where UK was below 46% on these shots was against Georgia this week (38%), and that was without De'Aaron Fox.
UK took 28 shots within the first 10 seconds of the shot clock; if they had a 58% eFG% instead of 36%, that would have generated 13 more points.
So, if Florida had been about as effective fast breaking as a typical UK opponent, and UK had shot about as well on fast breaks as they usually do, that would have taken 11 points from Florida and added 13 to UK. Given that the margin was 22 points, this 24 point swing would have been enough to give the Wildcats a victory.
Simply put, the fast breaks in this game were an outlier. UK has not allowed an unusually high amount of fast breaks or an unusually high eFG% on fast breaks to any of their top opponents this year except Florida. Also, UK has not shot as poorly on fast breaks against their top opponents as they did against Florida. If UK is able to continue their established standard of performance on fast breaks, these problems will go away and UK will be back to their top-10 level of play.
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