Which Cats come up big in the clutch?
Kentucky has had some notable meltdowns late in losses. Which Cats are pulling their weight, and which are coming up short?
Kentucky seems to relish in testing the stress levels of their fans late in games. Amazingly, the Cats have not had a single game since January 5th where they led with 5 minutes remaining, and won the final 5 minute stretch. “Pulling away” is not in UK’s vocabulary this season.
Against Auburn, Kentucky watched a comfortable lead vanish until they needed heroics late from Davion Mintz. The grad transfer was up to the task, hitting the three pointer to give Kentucky an 80-77 lead that they would not relinquish. That shot was part of a quiet season-long string of successes in the clutch for Mintz, who has been Kentucky’s best player in tight situations. In the last 5 minutes with the score within 10 points, Mintz:
Hits 58% of his threes, and has an effective FG% of 63%
Takes 30% of Kentucky’s shots when he’s in the game
Scores 21.1 points per 40 minutes
Those are just ridiculous numbers, and are made even more ridiculous when you consider that Mintz has an effective FG% of 43% in the rest of the game, takes under 20% of UK’s shots when he’s in, and scores a pedestrian 11 points per 40 minutes. Davion Mintz is Clark Kent, and the 5 minute mark in a close game is his phone booth where he turns into Superman.
Mintz isn’t the only player who sees his role change dramatically in the clutch, which I’ll define for the rest of this article as “score within 10 points in last 5 minutes + overtime”. In this edition of Hoops Insight, I’ll look at which UK players come up big in the clutch…and which fall a bit short.
A shift of roles late in games
For the first 35 minutes of the game, Davion Mintz and Devin Askew divide the playmaking duties on Kentucky fairly equally. Both players average 3.5 assists per 40 minutes in this stretch of the game, and both average about 3 assists for every 2 turnovers.
When it’s clutch time, however, their roles diverge. As mentioned above, Mintz becomes a pure scorer. He has racked up just 1 assist in 106 clutch possessions, compared to 26 shots from the field. Askew becomes the playmaker, as he averages 7 assists per 40 minutes in these clutch possessions. Of Kentucky’s 133 clutch posessions, Askew has played 117; that’s the most on the team. He’s held up his end of the bargain, with 13 assists and just 2 turnovers in that time. His shooting has not been great at a 43% effective FG%, hampered by 0-4 from three, but he averages 12 points per 40 minutes thanks to taking about 1 FTA for every FGA.
Olivier Sarr also sees his role shift in clutch situations. While he takes a little under 22% of UK’s shots normally when in the game, Sarr becomes an offensive fulcrum in the clutch. He ups his shooting volume to take almost 30% of Kentucky’s shots, and he’s posted a solid 55% effective FG% with this increased volume. He averages 19 points per 40 minutes in the clutch, and has even made 3 of 4 threes late. He’d be an even greater offensive force in the clutch if he wasn’t so drawn to the midrange jumper. Of his 19 shots in the clutch, 12 are from the midrange, and he’s only made 4.
If Davion Mintz and Olivier Sarr increase their shot volume dramatically in the clutch, other Wildcats must be taking more of a backseat. In fact, the two Wildcats who take the largest percentage of UK’s shots normally both take a far smaller share of UK’s shot volume in these clutch spots: Brandon Boston and Keion Brooks. They each take about 27% of Kentucky’s shot when they are in the game, the highest marks on the team. But in clutch situations, they are much less likely to shoot when they are in the game. Boston has take only 16% of UK’s in the clutch when he’s in the game, although he has been very effective on them. He’s still scored 15 points per 40 minutes thanks to a 56% effective FG% (up from 42% for the season) and drawing 8 FTAs to 9 FGAs. Boston also has a positive assist to turnover ratio in the clutch, so he’s generally been efficient despite the smaller role.
Keion Brooks has taken only 10% of Kentucky’s shots in the clutch when he’s in the game, a near-invisible amount. Unlike Boston, who’s been efficient on less volume, Brooks has had his struggles late. He has a 33% effective FG% in clutch situations, and averages only 7 points and 5 rebounds per 40 clutch minutes. He actually has more turnovers than rebounds in these spots. Despite these struggles he’s played about 75% of the clutch possessions since he returned from injury.
Isaiah Jackson is really the only Wildcat who gets about the same results in clutch and non-clutch situations. In clutch spots, he averages 12 points and 10 rebounds per 40 minutes with a 50% effective FG% and a ton of blocks. In non-clutch spots, he averages 14 points and 13 rebounds per 40 minutes with a 50% effective FG% and a ton of blocks.
There’s one more Wildcat who has very interesting clutch stats, Dontaie Allen. On the surface, he seems like a great weapon in the clutch. He averages 20 points per 40 clutch minutes with a 64% effective FG% and 50% shooting on threes. However, that is entirely the Mississippi State game. Excluding that game, he’s shot 1-6 in clutch situations and been turnover prone. He hasn’t played in a clutch situation since the Tennessee game on February 6th. He had the one supernova game, but other than that he just hasn’t done much in the clutch himself.
So what does this mean?
First of all, it’s very interesting how aggressive Davion Mintz gets in the clutch on offense. It’s pretty out of character with his play during the rest of games, but it seems to suit him. Mintz is not a strong entry passer, and Kentucky’s jumbo lineups with Brooks or Topping at the 3 instead of Boston or Allen seem to make him more of an entry passer than he’s comfortable with. When UK plays these jumbo lineups, Mintz has just a 30% effective FG% and takes 65% of his shots from three. When UK plays Boston or Allen on the wing, Mintz has a 49% effective FG% and takes just 54% of his shots from deep. In clutch situations, UK rarely plays these jumbo lineups, and Mintz seems more comfortable in these groupings.
Second, Kentucky has actually been quite good in clutch situations with the 3 players mentioned above who improve the most in these situations: Mintz, Askew, and Sarr. They’ve only played 51 clutch possessions, or about 40% of UK’s total, but UK is +14 in this time and has and adjusted margin of +43 points per 100 possessions (factoring in opponent quality). Kentucky has been nuclear on offense with these three in the clutch, scoring 135 points per 100 possessions! This trio played alongside Dontaie Allen in the Mississippi State win (+8 in 15 possessions) as well as a short stint against Tennessee (+7 in 4 possessions) and did very well. Their biggest issue has been on defense, where they have struggled to force turnovers and have occasionally been foul-prone.
The offensive improvement in the clutch has coincided with a slip defensively. Kentucky allows 106 points per 100 possessions in the clutch, and has a plus minus of exactly zero. The strange thing is, the decline on defense feels more flukey than the improvement on offense. The offensive gains are across the board, while Kentucky’s issues on defense are really limited to giving up a ton of free throws and being bad at defensive rebounding. The Cats collect 59% of opponent misses in the clutch; that is a complete disaster. They grabbed just 44% against Auburn, and it allowed the Tigers too many extra shots. The free throws are just something that happens when you’re trailing late; I won’t pretend that is going to be fixed. But if Kentucky can focus more on gang rebounding on defense in clutch situations, their offense is good enough to pull out some of these games.
I never thought I’d write an article praising Kentucky’s offense this season, but here we are.