How will Tre Mitchell fit in at UK?
The Cats are bringing in an experienced transfer. What impact might he have?
For a brief time it looked like UK would field the most inexperienced team in college basketball, but the Wildcats got two doses of good luck when Antonio Reeves dropped his bid to navigate grad transfer loopholes and West Virginia’s situation imploded. Now Kentucky has two highly experienced pieces to compliment their highly touted freshman class. Reeves is at least a known quantity to the coaching staff, although he likely wants an opportunity to do more on-ball creation this season. Tre Mitchell is largely new to this staff, however, and his addition was less about selecting a skill set to fit a need as it was a sheer desperation for frontcourt bodies. Given that, it may take some work to find his exact right fit in the UK scheme.
Tre Mitchell is a basketball player of some real talent, and is not going to look out of place in a high-major envrironment. Here are some basic facts:
Mitchell has averaged almost 14ppg and 6rpg in his 4 years in college, including 10 and 5 in his last two years in the Big 12
He averaged 16.5pts and 7.7 rebounds per 40 minutes the last 2 seasons, very similar to what Jacob Toppin, Keion Brooks, and Olivier Sarr have put up for Kentucky the last 3 seasons
He’s a career 35% 3 point shooter on about 3 attempts per game; Derek Willis (2017) is the last frontcourt player to match both of those figures for Kentucky
Mitchell is skilled enough to get minutes at Kentucky, there’s no question about that. Looking through both his statistical resume and film of his play last season, there are some positives and negatives that I think will be impactful for the Cats this season.
His outside shooting is a match for UK’s style
Mitchell combines shooting accuracy and volume at the power forward position in a way that Kentucky hasn’t seen in a while. PJ Washington and Wenyen Gabriel could hit threes, but didn’t put up outside shots quite as often as Mitchell. His 35% career 3 point shooting doesn’t even do him justice, as he hit over 38% on catch and shoot threes last season for West Virginia. On spot ups in half court offense he was even better, at almost 45%! He struggled more in pick and pop (4-16, 25%) and in transition (5-18, 28%); he had similar patterns in previous seasons. If he’d taken more than 50% of his threes in these spot up situations, his shooting percentage would have been even higher.
The good news is that Kentucky, when they let their power forwards shoot threes, tends to do so in half court spot up situations. Of Jacob Toppin’s 58 threes charted by Synergy last season, 2/3 were spot ups. It was 20 of 28 for Keion Brooks, and even 70 of 106 for Wenyen Gabriel in 2018 and 95 of 130 for Derek Willis in 2017. Kentucky PFs tend to take about 70% of their threes in spot up situations in half court offense, exactly where Mitchell excels. I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see him hit 38-40% this season.
Mitchell isn’t just an outside shooter, however. He’s also consistently been rated by Synergy as an elite post scorer. He isn’t quite the same sort of post scorer as Oscar Tshiebwe, however. Mitchell is adept at flashing into the post and using quick backdowns to bully smaller players. By using him at the power forward position, UK should be able to take advantage of this. The fact that UK likely won’t have another player demanding frequent low post touches should give him opportunities there.
Creating space for drivers
Mitchell’s offensive style should be a good match for UK’s guards, who should be dangerous creators off the dribble. Mitchell is unlikely to spend long amounts of time in the lane, which should pull his defender away from a position to help on drives. A consistent problem for UK in recent years is that their guards have driven into crowded lanes, limiting their ability to even get to the rim…much less finish there. That shouldn’t happen as much with Mitchell, as his post touches are usually off of quicker duck-ins. DJ Wagner, Antonio Reeves, and Rob Dillingham should have driving lanes available when they get by their man.
Watching film of West Virginia last season, it was clear that opponents respect his shooting and largely stuck with him on the perimeter. West Virginia didn’t have wildly dynamic guards and struggled to get to the rim, but it wasn’t for a lack of space. I watched 3 WVU games:
It actually stunned me how Mitchell was largely standing in the corner as a floor spacer. Mitchell was more of a post player in his first 3 NCAA seasons, but his game has definitely developed. His ability to stretch the floor and do some damage on forays into the post will be useful.
There are some concerns that stand out on tape, however….
Calipari magic needed on defense
Mitchell was quite bad on defense across these three games. He can use his physicality on defense, but his effort and athletic burst just aren’t impactful. He had a few times when he got blown by, which will happen to power forwards. That’s not my biggest concern. The main issue is that he really doesn’t offer any interior rim protection. He was late to rotate and help teammates (especially smaller players being posted up), and was of no help as a help defender. His block rates have never been anything special, below even those of Oscar Tshiebwe, and the tape backs up what the stats indicate: he has not been active defensively.
I usually don’t worry too much about individual defense when players come to Kentucky because Calipari can coach that up and gets effort out of players, even if they are limited. Ugonna Onyenso also showed enough promise as a rim protector that UK doesn’t need Mitchell to be a savior there. My only real concern is that there isn’t necessarily a consequence to poor defense from Mitchell this season, as Kentucky is already thin up front with him. Calipari is going to have to work the motivational magic and maybe protect Mitchell a bit with scheme.
Oddly passive on offense
The other thing that jumped out from the tape is how rarely Mitchell was really involved in the main offensive actions for the ‘Eers. He was largely standing in the corner, and his offense came off of opportunities created by others. He rarely created for himself, and when he tried it was almost equally likely to be a turnover as something positive. Mitchell doesn’t have the burst or tight handles to really attack off the dribble from the perimeter, and his drives are nearly always him bodying up a smaller wing. Mitchell did have some opportunities to operate out of the high post against Kansas, but didn’t look fluid and was very clearly executing a scripted play instead of reading anything from the defense. He had a couple nice passes in the games I watched, but the vast majority of the time he got the ball he was taking the shot.
I don’t know how much of this is attributable to Mitchell as opposed to poor offense from West Virginia. They didn’t have much fluid ball movement or exploit the defense frequently. I think it’s safe to say that Mitchell has not shown much ability to create offense for himself or others, so he’s going to rely on guards to get him the ball. Kentucky probably has the guards to do that, but it’s important to understand his limitations.
Some concerns in advanced stats
Something that bothers me a bit about Mitchell and his fit with UK has to do with his effect on shot volume. As I’ve written about recently, Kentucky’s offense under John Calipari has succeeded because of shot volume, not because of efficiency in shot making. Mitchell should help UK become a little better at shot making, either through his own shots or space he creates for others, but he may really hurt UK’s shot volume.
I used hoop-explorer.com ( a great resource, although not super intuitive to first time users) to look up how West Virginia performed with and without Mitchell on the court last season. I limited it to games against top-100 teams to control for quality of opponent a bit. West Virginia was substantially better in these games with Mitchell off the court, to the tune of about 8 points per 100 possessions….and the issue was almost entirely on offense. There was a big dropoff in 2 point shooting in these games with Mitchell in, and he did struggle inside the paint against better teams, but there was also an increase in turnovers and a decline in free throws drawn with Mitchell in. Offensive rebounding was higher with Mitchell in, but by my math the shot volume for West Virginia was at 102 with him in and the same with him out. That is lower than Kentucky has posted in any season in the last 5 (the limit of my data). Mitchell himself has very high turnover rates, and just average offensive rebounding and free throw rates. I don’t know that his skills mesh with the way a Calipari offense usually excels. I looked at the numbers from Mitchell’s season at Texas and it was even worse; the Longhorns shot volume was just 99 with him in and 102 with him out.
Mitchell brings a very specific skill set as a stretch power forward, and that can pay dividends for Kentucky. The coaching staff will need to figure out how to get him to buy in on defense and hope that his weaknesses on offense don’t compromise what Kentucky likes to do too much. That’s pretty much the case with any non-superstar, but in recent years that’s been the problem with UK’s staff: they can’t make things work without superstars. Mitchell isn’t an NBA guy, but there may be enough on the roster to paper over anything he isn’t bringing.