Agree regarding the shooting %. Disagree on 8-9 wins as UK is right now. The issue with the shooting isn’t UK hasn’t become a bad shooting team or had an off night. Teams have figured UK out. No need to respect the drive. No need to respect the inside game. So just pressure the outside to take away open looks. The shots UK took were in large part highly contested. Until UK changes up we have seen the blueprint going forward.
Do I think Pope has the ability to adjust? Yes. Does he have the pieces this year? Well I guess we will see.
Agree! I have been aiming to post something very similar and just haven't. Teams have adjusted, now we have to find an answer. Teams have decided to not allow us to beat them with the three and since Amari has been exposed as no threat when the offense is run through him out top, teams are sticking to our shooters, and we are not getting as good of looks as we were getting. Especially for Brea and Robinson and I think it has affected them the most. They seem to be shooting more off the dribble vs catch and shoot like before. They are both long and can shoot over a lot of the challenges, but those shots are not as high of percentage shot as what they were getting earlier.
I think this has affected our drives as well since the other team's big has an easier time in helping out and challenging in the lane. Against OSU we missed several layups or short shots that I think we would normally make. We'll see going forward.
Amari could really help this team a lot if he could become more effective at both ends of the court.
On the offensive end if you continue to run the offense through him, he has to make the defense pay at a very high rate when he rolls to basket and receives the pass or drives the lane. So far has not shown that ability.
Other option imo is to stop running the offense with him out top and actually posting him on the low block. This too would necessitate him actually finishing around the rim. If he could do that reasonably well, the hope would be that it would force some teams at least to have to double him down low and that would hopefully lead to some open looks for a shooter. He is a good passer. Then again, all of our bigs have been a black hole once they receive the ball in the paint.
On the defensive end is where I am most disappointed in him. He has the physical tools. Size, fairly agile, and can jump when he wants to. I think he has won every opening tip except one. He rarely challenges the other team's guards like ours get challenged on drives. He very often doesn't even raise his arms. I don't know if it is mental, lack of desire/effort, stamina or some combination of these. He has shown flashes of playing decent position defense even though his help defense has been very poor.
Sorry for such a long post and is just a "bennies" opinion.
