The last-minute additions Kentucky coach John Calipari made to construct his roster weren’t totally by design nor were they left to luck. The approach is starting to become the new norm for college basketball coaches.
And it allows Calipari to usher in a new style for the Wildcats that will look a lot like Connecticut did en route to winning the national championship last season.
Get ready for the Three-Cats.
UK ranked near the bottom of the 363 NCAA Division I men’s basketball schools and almost dead last among major conference schools last season when it came to its percentage of 3-point attempts.
Just 30% of the field goals Kentucky attempted were from 3, according to Kenpom.com, which ranked the Cats 330th. UConn won the title last season with nearly 42% of its shot attempts coming from behind the arc.
When the Cats play their Blue-White scrimmage on Saturday at Northern Kentucky, in an event to raise funds for flood and tornado relief in the state, they’ll look a lot more like the Huskies when it comes to shot selection.
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That’s not to say UK can start booking reservations for the Final Four in Phoenix. UConn had a much more experienced roster with only two freshmen among its top 10 players. The Cats have a class of eight freshmen, probably six of which will log major minutes, and will endure plenty of challenges from that alone.
But UK is built more in the image of the 2022-23 Huskies just from the amount of shooters Calipari amassed.
And three of those players weren’t solidified on the roster until after early June.
Senior guard Antonio Reeves, who led the team in both makes (80) and 3-point percentage (39.8) last season, withdrew from the NBA draft, but needed reassurance he wasn’t going to be phased out by the heralded freshmen before he committed to returning.
Graduate forward Tre Mitchell, a 6-foot-9 stretch-4, only entered the transfer portal after West Virginia coach Bob Huggins’ sudden resignation following his drunken driving arrest.
Zvonimir Ivisic, a 7-foot-2 Croatian who committed in August, had to clear hurdles from being an international student and wasn’t officially admitted and cleared to play until this month.
All three players are part of the reason why the Cats are best suited to spread the floor with drive and kick opportunities from 3. Tack on freshmen Reed Sheppard, Justin Edwards and D.J. Wagner and UK can have a lineup on the floor where every player is a threat to make 3s.
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“I believe we have a lot of shooters that’s on the team, a lot of guys that can make shots at the highest level,” Reeves said. “Add the ball movement, we have guys that can playmake or help facilitate for others.”
The Cats provided a glimpse of how things would be back in July in Toronto during four games competing in the GLOBL Jam. They shot 37% from 3 while launching 39% of their shot attempts from behind the arc. (The highest percentage of 3s during the Calipari era was the 2010-11 season in which 32.4% of their shots were from behind the arc.)
It seemed second nature for UK to do that against international competition while adhering to FIBA rules geared toward a free flow to the game. But this is college basketball.
The Cats will face many more teams with different schemes designed to slow down the game and disrupt that kind of flow. In those cases, can UK stay disciplined enough to take the best 3 and not just the available one?
“If we move the ball the same way we did in Toronto, I can’t see many teams stopping us from shooting the ball well,” Mitchell said.
UK currently doesn’t have a definitive post game to boast of with two of its 7-footers injured. Calipari doesn’t expect freshman Aaron Bradshaw and sophomore Ugonna Onyenso back until sometime in December, although he walked back his comments from last week that they’d be ready in “five to six weeks.”
Ivisic is far from a traditional big. The strength of his game is more on the perimeter where he can shoot off the dribble.
It all lines up for the Cats to start launching them up and seeing where the 3 can take them.
Reach sports columnist C.L. Brown at [email protected], follow him on X at @CLBrownHoops and subscribe to his newsletter atprofile.courier-journal.com/newsletters/cl-browns-latest to make sure you never miss one of his columns.