Quick notes on the win vs LSU
Kentucky played one of their best games of the season to topple the Tigers. How can Kentucky carry it forward?
In what feels like a lost season, Kentucky reminded fans what it’s like to see a Wildcat team dominate an opponent against LSU. In an ordinary season a 13 point home win over a solid but unspectacular conference foe wouldn’t merit a lot of reflection, but this is as extraordinary as a season gets. I thought that I’d spend this edition of Hoops Insight looking back a bit at this game.
A good offensive game gets no love from the computers
Kentucky played one of their best offensive games of the season against LSU. The Cats racked up 49 first half points on their way to an 82 point outing, their highest of the season. On a per-possession basis, it was the 3rd best game of the year at 112 points per 100 possessions, behind only the Morehead State and Florida games. Kentucky entered the game rated 98th in offensive efficiency per KenPom and afterwards they rocketed up to….well, down to 101st. So what gives?
The reason is simply that LSU is very bad on defense. The Tigers currently rank 133rd in defensive efficiency, so having a good game against them isn’t necessarily anything to write home about (according to the computer formulas). In fact, Kentucky’s offensive performance was only the 5th best by a team against LSU this season. Incredibly, SIU-Edwardsville actually posted a better points-per-possession game against LSU’s defense than Kentucky did.
I don’t think that it’s so black and white, however. First of all, Kentucky has played some other poor defensive teams and not managed to have this strong of a game. Georgia is about as bad on defense as LSU is, and Kentucky put up just 87 points per 100 possessions against the Bulldogs. Second of all, Kentucky did show some real progress in their offensive fundamentals in this game. There’s a concept in basketball analysis called the Four Factors that breaks the game into shooting, rebounding, turnovers and free throws, with a metric for each. the LSU game was the first all season where Kentucky exceeded their season average in all offensive Four Factors: effective FG%, offensive rebounding rate, turnover rate, and free throw rate. The story of this season has been that something has always gone wrong, but by and large everything was in sync on offense for UK.
That’s not to say everything was perfect, but Kentucky had a solid offensive approach. The shot selection was better than it has been, as UK took fewer midrange shots than shots at the rim, threes, or free throws. The first half was a near-perfect example of good shot selection, as UK took only 4 of 32 shots from midrange and put up 126 points per 100 possessions. That’s just slightly below the level Alabama posted against LSU in the previous game, but UK only hit 35% of their threes vs 54% for the Tide. The secret was that UK got into the paint and scored there, hitting 9 of 11 shots inside. In the second half Kentucky slipped back a bit into their old ways, taking 12 of 32 shots from midrange; they were 1-12. If Kentucky can keep improving their shot distribution, they can put up strong offensive numbers even against better defensive foes.
An underrated defensive game
This didn’t seem to be a terribly impressive defensive performance if you just looked at the final numbers. Kentucky allowed 95 points per 100 possessions, right about their season average. However, that undersells the performance because LSU is possibly the best offensive team Kentucky will play all season. the Tigers are ranked 6th in offensive efficiency per KenPom, and they only have had 1 game all year putting up fewer points per 100 possessions. The Tigers’ worst offensive performance was their prior game against Alabama, when the Tide bombed away from three and blew out LSU by 30. Given that LSU probably wasn’t trying their hardest to score in garbage time, it’s reasonable to say that Kentucky did a better job defensively than any Tiger opponent.
Kentucky moved up from 21st in defensive efficiency to 15th at KenPom on the strength of this game. The Wildcats are trying to accomplish something rather dubious this season and become the 6th team in the last 11 years to rank in the top 25 in defensive efficiency but post a losing record. Actually, it’s fair to say they are probably trying to NOT do the latter part of that.
Against LSU, Kentucky continued their run of largely shutting down opponent scoring away from the paint. Much of the focus after the game was on the Tigers going 4-23 from three, but less publicized was the fact that LSu was also 1-18 on midrange shots. For the season, Kentucky opponents are hitting 25% of their midrange shots and 30% of their threes. That defense is keeping Kentucky in a lot of games even when their offense goes missing.
A few things to keep working on
With that being said, there are still areas to improve on. First, Kentucky has to keep working on better shot selection. 12 midrange jumpers in the second half is just too many, and that is going to keep dragging down the Wildcat offense.
Second, Kentucky needs to clean up some of the strange rotation decisions. In the first half against LSU, the second most played UK lineup featured a big frontcourt of Keion Brooks, Jacob Toppin, and Lance Ware together. This group was outscored by 7 points in 6 possessions and was the only blemish on an otherwise great first half. Kentucky has weirdly been playing these big lineups with Toppin or Brooks at small forward lately, with 84 possessions across the last 7 games for these types of lineups. They have been consistently bad, posting a -14 in those 7 games and only posting 1 game with a positive plus/minus (+2 in 23 poss vs Alabama). These groups have unsurprisingly been very turnover prone, have gone 1-14 from three in 7 games, and have surprisingly been poor at rebounding. Kentucky needs to stop this experimentation now, because those lineups are just costing UK game after game.
Kentucky continues to have strange patterns in which lineups play a lot from game to game. Against LSU, the most played lineup was Askew/Mintz/Boston/Brooks/Jackson, and this group was excellent with a +10 in 20 possessions. But this group came out of nowhere, having played only 1 possessions the prior game, 6 possessions against Florida, and zero other possessions all season. There just doesn’t seem to be a solid logic behind which lineups play a lot from game to game. Of the 7 lineups who played 5 or more possessions against Georgia, only one played 5 or more possessions against LSU. Kentucky is going to need to determine which lineups can execute a winning gameplan and try to build around them, but that doesn’t seem like it will happen any time soon.
Overall, this was a performance UK can continue to build on, even if the offensive improvement needs to be taken with a grain of salt. A continued focus on improving shot selection and developing a more consistent rotation will go a long way toward salvaging something from what appeats to be a lost season in the Bluegrass.