Big Blue Nation gets arachnophobia..

An early season loss to the Richmond Spiders has UK fans up in arms. What doomed the Cats? Is it fixable?

For the second season in a row, the Kentucky Wildcats followed up promising early games by laying an egg at home. This time it was a veteran Richmond Spiders team who did in the Cats. While losing to Richmond is a good bit more understandable than last year’s loss to Evansville was, this performance was still very very bad. for the first time since March 2019, Kentucky was the losing team in a game with “garbage time”. In this case, it kicked in when Kentucky trailed by 15 points with 38 seconds remaining. Richmond is a solid team, but their quality has been a bit overblown aorund this game. Last season Richmond didn’t have a 12 point win over a single team better than 70th in KenPom, and this season they are ranked 50th in KenPom even with the Kentucky win. Make no mistake, this is a bad loss.

That being said, I went through the data and rewatched some of the game, and I’ve noticed three things that I feel swung the game. But first, I’ll address a few things that I don’t think swung the game as much as expected.

First, even though UK was extremely turnover prone, I don’t think that was the biggest factor that cost them the game. In the first half, UK turned it over on 25% of their possessoins and still had a 4 point lead. In the second half, UK turned it over on 29% of their possessions and lost by 19 (excluding 3 garbage time points). The turnovers didn’t help, but that wasn’t what swung the game Richmond’s way.

Second, I also am not super worried about UK shooting 20-33 from the free throw line. Shooting free throws is a more effective way to score; the worst free throw shooting team still scores more points getting to the line than the best shooting team does taking a shot from the field. Even if UK had a very good night from the line, they might have hit 4 or 5 more free throws, and that wasn’t closing a 12 point gap. If you assume 33 free throws is about 17 possessions, UK got 20 points on those possessions. That’s equivalent to an effective FG% of 59% (10 made 2’s = 20 pts, 10/17 = 59%). Kentucky hasn’t posted an eFG% above 54% for a season under John Calipari, so they’d take 59% all day. It’d be great to hit more free throws, but getting those free throws was more valuable than any shots Kentucky was taking.

So what do I think were the big factors?

1. Kentucky let Richmond get to the paint in the second half

   In the first half, Richmond took just 10 of their 35 shots in the paint (29%). 13 of Richmond’s shots came from midrange, and they hit just 1 of them. But in the second half, Richmond took 15 of their 32 shots in the paint (47%), and just 4 midrange shots. They were 0-4, but that didn’t too much damage to their offense. I went back and watched the film, and it seems clear that Richmond’s players were hesitant to drive all the way to the paint against Kentucky’s length in the first half. They didn’t push into the lane even when they had an opening, and frequently settled for midrange jumpers. In the second half, they began challenging the Wildcat defenders and met little resistance.

   This is something to worry about a bit, because Kentucky didn’t do a great job containing ballhandlers. It looked like UK expected Richmond to just be afraid of length, but didn’t actually use their length to do much on defense. When Richmond got more bold, it paid off. Defensive effort is something that should improve as the season goes on, and typically does with Calipari-coached teams. This team needs a reminder of that.

2. Kentucky was outperformed in the paint

   In the first half, Richmond hit 7 of their 10 shots in the paint. That’s not good defense by Kentucky, but that’s nothing compared to the second half. Richmond managed to hit 14 of 15 shots in the paint in the second half…that’s 93%! This wasn’t inflated by fast breaks; only 5 of the 15 shots came in the first 10 seconds of the shot clock. Richmond continually finished over the Cats inside, which compounded the problem of letting them take shots there (see #1).

   Kentucky was able to get into the paint themselves, as the Cats took 52% of their shots there. But while UK hit 73% of their shots in the paint in the first half, they hit just 47% in the second half.

   Honestly, there’s some bad luck both ways for UK. No team hits 93% of their shots in the paint against any D-1 team, and Kentucky missed several easy shots in the second half that they hit in the first. But the defense in the paint is something UK needs to address. Morehead State was able to hit 69% of their shots in the paint, and Richmond hit 84%. UK’s big men need to work on their rotations to challenge more shots, and the perimeter players need to be able to contest shots when guarding the ballhandler.

3. Kentucky was completely unable to hit anything outside the paint

   I am not exaggerating; during the second half Kentucky went 0 for 14 outside the paint. In my notes following the Morehead State game I expressed some concern that Kentucky took very few halfcourt shots in the paint and were bailed out by strong shooting from the midrange and three. That….didn’t happen this time. UK went 10-17 against Morehead State outside the paint in halfcourt offense and 3-16 against Richmond. To be honest, 10-17 isn’t sustainable and neither is 3-16. Of the 3 factors that I believe cost UK the most, this is the one I’m least worried about. UK will probably settle in around 35-40% shooting outside the paint for the season, like they usually do. They aren’t as good as they looked against Morehead in this area or as bad as they looked against Richmond. The fact that Kentucky got to the paint more often against Richmond is a good sign, even though they had a rough night hitting shots there, too. If Kentucky continues to take 50% or more of their shots in the paint, their halfcourt offense will come around.

The Richmond loss was an ugly one, and Kentucky has some clear things to work on. In particular, defending the paint has emerged as an early season issue. Turnovers will likely be a recurring theme, but I think Kentucky can actuall overcome those with solid defense and aggressive offense. Assuming Kentucky isn’t the worst shooting team in college basketball, and their opponents don’t hit 80%+ of their shots in the paint, the Cats will be fine. There will be ups and downs, but they’ll keep improving through the season…just like they always do.