UK's turnover problems are worse than you'd think
A steal by the Wildcats turns into points less often than a steal by their opponents, and that's a big problem for the Wildcats
This season Kentucky has struggled with turnovers on offense and defense. The Wildcats turn the ball over more than they ever have under Calipari, and force turnovers less often than almost any time under Calipari. It’s not just an issue of winning the turnover battle, however. When Kentucky gets a steal, they are less likely to convert it into points than their opponents. This weakness is overshadowing the fact that Kentucky is actually doing fairly well at outscoring opponents in other situations. In this edition of Hoops Insight, I look at UK’s problem turning steals into points.
Kentucky’s pretty solid when the defense is set, but has problems after steals
If you think about how a basketball possession starts, we can break that into 3 categories:
Dead balls (after a made basket or a dead ball turnover)
Defensive rebounds
Steals
After a dead ball change of possession, Kentucky has the opportunity to set its defense and is pretty effective. UK allows 95 points per 100 possessions in these situations and scores 97 themselves. UK’s main advantage in these situations is that the Wildcats draw free throws more often than opponents do (37 FTA per 100 FGA, vs 30 FTA per 100 FGA for opponents), and turn it over no more often than opponents (both at 18%).
After defensive rebounds, UK is also outscoring their opponents per possession. Kentucky allows 92 points per 100 possession and scores 93 themselves. Again UK draws free throws more often than opponents, and UK actually shoots better than opponents on these types of possessions (47% eFG% vs 42%), mitigating some turnover issues (21% of possessions for UK vs 17% for opponents).
But after steals, UK is much less effective than their opponents. UK allows 128 points per 100 possessions after giving up a steal, but only generates 114 themselves. The issue is two fold: Kentucky turns the ball over much more often than opponents (17% vs 9%), and draws fewer free throws (25 FTA per 100 FGA vs 29 for opponents). So while opponents turn it over infrequently and draw free throws at the same rate as the season, UK still turns the ball over at a high rate and draw fewer free throws than on any other kind of possession.
The guards and wings are struggling
Kentucky’s issues after steals stem from their guards and wings. That’s to be expected, as these transition situations shouldn’t involve big men very often. Each group has a slightly different issue, though:
Kentucky’s guards turn the ball over more often after a steal than in normal play: This is surprising, since after a steal the offense should have a big advantage, but both Devin Askew and Davion Mintz actually turn the ball over more frequently after UK gets a steal than they do normally
The wings draw almost no fouls after steals: After a steal the defense is scrambling, so an aggressive offense should be able to draw fouls at a rate equal to or higher than halfcourt offense. Kentucky’s guards are able to do this, but their wings (Boston/Clarke/Allen) just can’t get to the foul line at all after steals. These three have taken 45 shots after UK got a steal, but only 2 free throws; that’s a rate of 4.4 FTA per 100 FGA. For the season, they tend to draw about 21 FTAs per 100 FGAs, so that’s a huge dropoff
Oddly enough, the wings cut their turnovers sharply after UK gets a steal and the guards draw free throws 50% more often after a steal than they usually do. It almost makes you wonder if, in transition, UK would be better off getting the ball to a wing like BJ Boston and letting Mintz/Askew run the wings to attack the basket rather than the other way around.
UK isn’t able to capitalize when winning the steals battle
UK’s disadvantage in turning steals into points has cost them dearly, and it has frittered away Kentucky’ advantages in deadball situations and rebounds. It also means that Kenrucky has to win the steals battle by a large margin in order to avoid being outscored.
Let’s divide UK’s SEC opponents so far into 2 buckets:
Group A: Teams in the bottom half of D-1 in committing turnovers (Mississippi State, Vanderbilt, Florida, Georgia, Auburn)
Group B: Teams in the top half of D-1 in committing turnovers (Alabama, Arkansas, LSU, Missouri, Tennessee)
Against Group A, Kentucky generated 61 steals and turned them into 69 points. The Wildcats gave up 50 steals and opponents turned them into 64 points. So, UK outscored opponents by +5 points on steals, but they outscored these opponents by +23 points on all other possessions and +28 points total.
Against Group B, Kentucky generated 37 steals and turned them into 37 points. The Wildcats gave up 40 steals and opponents turned them into 53 points. So, UK was outscored by -16 points on steals, but outscored opponents by +7 points on all other possessions and was outscored by -9 points overall.
This could present a challenge vs Mississippi. The Rebels force a lot of steals (18th nationally) but also give up a lot (249th). Mississippi is likely to come out better in this exchange unless they give up many more steals than they commit. Kentucky has only won 2 games this season where they didn’t get more steals than their opponents: Jan 2nd vs Mississippi State (both got 10), and Feb 17th vs Vanderbilt (UK got 7 and gave up 8). In those 2 games UK outshot their opponents from three 40% to 24% and won by a combined 9 points, so that’s what it takes for UK to win if they give up more steals than they force. That’s not a pretty picture and not the way to sustain success, but it may be what UK needs against Ole Miss.