What You Should Know for UK for Jan 14: Why can't UK outscore starting lineups?
After thorough victories over UNC and Louisville to close out non-conference play, the hope was that Kentucky had found a consistent formula and would be in great shape to contend in a very tough SEC conference schedule. While the Wildcats have started out a respectable 2-1, each game has had far more nail-biting moments than would have been expected given the strong finish to December. Before I dive into where I think the Cats are falling short, here are the one-page stats profiles for the first 3 SEC games, and the season to date:
UK Stats Profile vs Alabama/Texas A&M/Vanderbilt, Jan 5-12, 2019
UK Stats Profile, Season to Date through Jan 12, 2019
What You Should Know: As you can see in table C in the stats profiles, for the season UK has struggled when opponents play all 5 starters but dominated the rest of the game. Here are the numbers for the season:
UK has been outscored by opposing starting lineups by 12 points, but have outscored all other opposing lineups by 158 points. Adjusting for opponent strength, UK has an adjusted margin of +0.02 pts/poss against 5 starters but +0.27 pts/poss during the rest of the game. This roughly equates to the difference between the 144th best team in the country and the 6th best team.
What Is Happening? As the chart above shows, UK allows opponents starters to shoot amazingly well, struggles to get offensive rebounds against them, and doesn't force many turnovers. These issues largely disappear once any bench player enters the game. While it's normal to perform a bit worse against starters, it is not normal to see such a dramatic shift.
The lineup UK plays the most against opposing starters is, unsurprisingly, UK's starting lineup of Hagans/Herro/Johnson/Travis/Washington. They've played 112 possessions against starters and have a plus/minus of exactly zero. The second most common lineup UK has played against starters only has 19 possessions, so there's not really another group getting significant time against opposing starters.
The odd thing is that it's not a case that UK's starters are performing poorly for the rest of the game. When playing against 4 or fewer starters, UK's starters again have the most time of any UK lineup at 104 possessions, and are +12 in that time with an adjusted margin of +0.23 pts/poss. All other UK lineups have an adjusted margin of +0.27 pts/poss against 4 or fewer starters, so Kentucky isn't giving more minutes to undeserving lineups.
Maybe the most interesting thing is that, if you look at the stats profile for the 3 SEC games, you see that much of this issue is caused by the last 3 games. During SEC play, UK is -24 against opposing starters and +42 during the rest of the game. As is the case for the full season, the biggest issues are great opponent shooting and few opponent turnovers, and the issues vanish when playing any other lineups. UK's starters are outscored by 10 points in 48 possessions, but that's due to a -19 in 24 first half possessions being somewhat offset by +9 in 22 second half possessions.
What Does This Mean for UK? This seems to be something that is more of a curiosity than a real, sustainable problem. Something is going wrong, since the same general patterns of underperforming against starters are present in SEC play and the full season. However, there are three main factors that make me believe this is something that can be worked out:
1) It's preposterous to think that opposing starting lineups are so good, yet the opponents become massively vulnerable once they replace even one player. UK's starters in SEC play are -10 in 48 possessions against 5 starters, but +8 in 22 possessions against 4 starters. Opponents are shooting 52% on 3 pointers in the last 3 games when they have 5 starters in, but 31% when they have 4 starters in. They commit turnovers on only 11% of possessions with 5 starters, but 27% with 4 starters. There's just no way any one player on any of UK's SEC opponents means that much.
2) Most of UK's difficulties against opposing starting lineups goes away after halftime. I doubt UK's coaches are so bad at game prep, yet so good at halftime adjustments, that this is the sort of pattern that will continue through SEC play. In the 2nd half of their last 3 games, UK is +3 in 46 possessions against starting lineups and +4 in 29 possessions against 4 starters.
3) UK had no unusual trouble against opposing starting lineups in the last few games prior to SEC play. In the last 4 non-conference games after inserting Hagans into the starting lineup, UK was +11 in 70 possessions against opposing starting lineups, and +36 in 216 possessions during the rest of the game, for nearly identical margins per possession. UK's starters were +20 in 56 possessions, so they dominated starters in these 4 games, 3 of which were against potential NCAA tournament teams.
Given these points, this probably just requires a little more focus at the beginning of games, and a little better luck with opponent shooting from deep. There's no reason opposing starters should be shooting 83% on threes, as they are in the first halves of the last 3 games. Given the fact that Coach Cal addressed this in his postgame comments after Vanderbilt, I'd expect UK's starters to have a sharper focus on Tuesday and avoid the poor starts. There's certainly no reason to change the starting lineup or rotations, given that UK's starters have proven they can dominate starters on quality teams.
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