The Wildcat takeover of Tampa didn’t turn out quite like everyone had hoped. Instead of adding to their dominance in SEC Tournament championships, UK fell to the wayside while Tennessee captured their first SEC Tournament since 1979. Much of Wildcat Twitter was draped in doom and gloom afterwards, and the consensus seems to be that it was a bad performance by Kentucky. In this edition of Hoops Insight, I’ll show you why that’s not the case. Plus, I offer a preview of UK’s NCAA Tournament pod.
A solid performance in almost every way except one…a BIG one
Kentucky’s loss to Tennessee was a cloud with a lot of silver linings. In the game, Kentucky:
Turned the ball over on 15% of possessions, the lowest rate of the 3 games vs the Vols this season
Forced turnovers on 19% of Vol possessions, the highest mark for a UK opponent since Alabama on Feb 5
Collected 35% of offensive rebounds and allowed Tennessee to grab just 23%, both the 2nd best figures of any Vol opponent since the last UK-Tenn game
Hit 78% of shots at the rim, a massive improvement over the 33% UK hit the last time the two played
Drew free throws at the highest rate UK has in 5 games
This is all overshadowed by the fact that UK hit just 7 of 45 shots away from the rim. That’s a ghastly 16%; even something subpar like 30% would have likely led to a UK win.
It’s important to qualify that this was a bad shooting performance, but most everything else for Kentucky actually went well enough to win. This was a huge improvement over the last game against Tennessee, where UK was turnover prone, couldn’t force turnovers, couldn’t hit at the rim, and drew free throws at half the rate of Tennessee. That was a bad performance. This was a bad shooting night.
The most interesting thing about this game to me is that Kentucky made some subtle adjustments to get back in the game after a frigid first half left UK down 11. At halftime UK had a 28% effective FG% compared to 52% for Tennessee, and was fortunate to only be down 11. UK had avoided turnovers and drawn free throws to stay in the game despite the shooting woes. UK took 82% of their shots away from the rim in the first half and went 3 for 23; a 4 for 5 showing at the rim seemed irrelevant. TyTy Washington led the Wildcats with 8 shot attempts, taking 36% of UK’s shots when he was in the game. UK had only 6 shots attempts in transition out of 28 total.
In the second half, UK wisely adjusted their offense a bit. They ran more, taking 10 transition attempts. UK also worked the offensive glass more, collecting over 40% of their own misses. This enabled UK to get to the rim more against a tough Tennessee defense. Instead of Tyty Washington looking to create his own shot, he deferred to Oscar Tshiebwe and Keion Brooks. In the first half Washington took 6 shots in halfcourt offense vs just 4 combined for Tshiebwe and Brooks, but in the second half Washington took just 2 in halfcourt vs 14 for Tshiebwe & Brooks. Meanwhile, UK kept the turnovers in check and forced turnovers from the Vols. This enabled UK to outscore Tennessee by 4 points in the second half despite hitting just 4 of 22 shots away from the rim, no better than their first half showing. The +4 point margin even undersells what UK did; they outscored Tennessee by 8 points until a combination of Volunteer free throws and UK desperation ate into that margin in the final minute.
To put it simply, UK outscored a top-10 team by 8 points over 19 minutes despite hitting 18% of their shots from more than a few feet away from the rim. I take it as a tremendously positive sign that UK found a way to claw back into a game against an elite team when their shooting was at its worst. UK hadn’t had a tendency to miss these kind of shots at this rate earlier against Tennessee, either; UK hit 63% away from the rim in the first matchup and 33% in the second. That’s a far cry from 18%. UK should be fine.