2014-15 Kentucky Wildcats: Just Short of Perfection
They were the first team to reach 38-0, but ended 38-1 with a Final Four heartbreak.
They are on the short list of “best college basketball team to not win a title”. Their top 9 players all made the NBA, and 4 were drafted in that year’s NBA lottery. They have the highest rating of any team in KenPom.com’s database (goes back to 2001-02). They made “platoon” a buzzword in college basketball. In the end, they fell short of the championship that would cement their legacy. For the inaugural edition of Hoops Hindsight, I’ll take a look at the 2014-15 Kentucky Wildcats, what made them so good, and how they feel just short.
The Wildcats were historically good, especially on defense
First and foremost, the 2014-15 edition of the Wildcats holds the highest Adjusted Efficiency Margin since KenPom started tracking it, at +36.91 pts/100 possessions better than average. When your resume starts with “best ever measured” in a metric that is designed to encompass team quality, that’s a good start.
To be one of the best of all time, you need to be great on both sides of the ball, and Kentucky was during the 2014-15 season. On offense, they finished 6th in offensive efficiency, 8th in offensive rebounding rate, and avoided blocks or steals at top-12 rates. But it’s defense where they stood head and shoulders above the rest. On defense, they finished 1st in defensive efficiency, 1st in effective FG% allowed, 1st in 3pt FG% allowed, 2nd in 2pt FG% allowed, and 2nd in block rate. Since KenPom began tracking stats, UK’s 2014-15 performance ranks 3rd all time in defensive efficiency, 2nd all-time in 3pt FG% allowed, and 1st all time in effective FG% allowed.
Kentucky’s defense was smothering, regardless of context. Per hoop-math.com, they allowed the lowest effective FG% in transition opportunities for the season, and the 2nd-lowest in non-transition. They allowed the 17th-lowest effective FG% on shots at the rim, and the lowest on both 2 point jumpers and 3 pointers. The Wildcats used their length all over the court, as they ranked 8th in block rate at the rim, 1st on 2 point jumpers, and 6th on 3 pointers.
The Wildcats did have a couple of notable weaknesses. They ranked only 143rd in 3 point shooting at under 35%. Their most frequent shooter, Aaron Harrison, only hit 32% for the season. The Wildcats did mitigate some of this by shooting few threes; they were 325th in the country in frequency of 3 point attempts.
While the Cats were a dominant offensive rebounding team, they were poor on the defensive glass. They ranked only 212th in the percentage of defensive rebounds they got. Part of the issue was that they were aggressive trying to block shots, and gave up offensive boards when they missed. But Kentucky did have enough length inside to keep contesting these second chance shots, since they ranked 17th in field goal percentage allowed at the rim.
The Wildcats had tremendous size, especially around the basket
Kentucky was able to block and contest so many shots because of their team height. Per KenPom, Kentucky’s average height (weighted by minutes played) was just over 79.3” (just over 6’7”). That led the NCAA that season. KenPom tracks another data point which he calls effective height, which is the height of your centers and power forwards above average. These are the positions that tend to contest shots at the rim. At these two positions, Kentucky averaged nearly a 7-inch combined height advantage over an average team. That’s the 5th highest figure since 2002, topped only by 4 teams with gigantic big men (2007 Georgetown with Roy Hibbert, 2012 and 2013 New Mexico State with Sim Bhullar, and 2016 UC Irvine with Mamadou Ndiaye). Unlike the other teams with a huge effective height advantage, Kentucky didn’t have anyone over 7 feet tall. Instead, Kentucky had a whopping 6 players between 6’9” and 7’0” who shared minutes at the 4 and 5 positions. Basically, there were always at least 2 sets of long arms ready to contest shots.
Kentucky was not particularly skilled offensively, and didn’t do a great job of shot selection
While the Wildcats ended the season 6th in offensive efficiency, that wasn’t due to shotmaking. Of the Four Factors, Kentucky’s shooting was actually their relative weakness:
75th in effective FG%
34th in turnover rate
8th in offensive rebounding
31st in free throw rate
Kentucky was pretty good at everything on offense, but clearly had some weaknesses when it came to shooting.
The one component of shooting where Kentucky was elite was, unsurprisingly, at the rim. Per hoop-math, the Wildcats were 4th nationally in eFG% at the rim, thanks to their cadre of skilled bigs. However, they were only 197th in eFG% on 2 point jumpers, and 148th in 3point FG%.
To make matters worse, Kentucky actually took very few shots at the rim. They ranked 220th in the percentage of their shots taken at the rim (excluding putbacks). They also took few threes, ranking 324th in 3 point frequency. UK instead took a large proportion of 2 point jumpers, ranking 31st in that category. Given what analytics has demonstrated about the efficiency of various types of shots, this is pretty suboptimal. Given the effectiveness of Kentucky’s big men, it’s even more so.
To be fair, shot selection depends somewhat on what the opponent is allowing. It’s pretty clear that opponents had a health respect for Kentucky’s big men, and geared their defense on taking away the post. The best evidence of this is that the two players who took the highest share of UK’s shots when in the game were Aaron Harrison (27%) and Devin Booker (26%). These players took about 60% of their halfcourt shots from three. As opponents sent double-teams into the post, Kentucky often looked for their designated shooters on the perimeter. This happened often enough that those designated shooters ended up with the biggest role in the offense.
Very few slip-ups against a tough schedule
Kentucky played 20 of their 39 games against opponents who finished the season ranked in the top 50 per KenPom, and KenPom rated their strength of schedule 26th in the country. Only 9 of their games were decided by single digits, all against top 50 teams. We can use adjusted margin to further contextualize their performances, as it adjusts scoring margin for the number of possessions and strength of opponents.
For the 2015 season, the #10 ranked team per KenPom had an adjusted margin of +24 points per 100 possessions. Kentucky played at this level or better in 33 of their 39 games during the season, only falling below it against Boston U (+23), Columbia (+13), Ole Miss (-1), Vanderbilt (+21), LSU (+21), and Wisconsin (+17). Kentucky’s opponents couldn’t hope that the Wildcats would have much of an off night.
The biggest factor in these 6 games specifically tended to be opponent 3 point shooting. Over these 6 games, UK’s opponents shot 39% from 3, compared to 26% for the season (excluding garbage time). 5 of the 6 opponents hit at least 7 threes against UK (only LSU failed to); these were the only 5 games all season where an opponent hit 7 or more threes.
So, now you’ve hopefully got more of an idea about just how good the 2014-15 Kentucky Wildcats were, and a little understanding of why. In my next issue, I’ll look at Kentucky’s lineup decisions that season, including the infamous “platoon” system.