Saw the weaknesses of our team against WKU

[gracetoyou]

This is just me but I'd like our guys to be more intentional looking for Brea when he's in the game. Bigs need to post simply to set something up for him & guards need to drive with the purpose of looking for him. His shot is SPECIAL...& should get 8 attempts from 3 every single game. He ought to be our one volume shooter.

Robinson takes some bad shots at times...to me Brea cannot take a bad shot. Seems like there's a shorter leash on Brea than Robinison.

 

[blue cincy]

Bad passing kept Western in the game, along with poor shooting, and horrible foul calls on both sides.
It seemed as if the game would never end with all the fouls being called.

Officials did not want to see the family at Thanksgiving. They wanted to stay in Rupp and enjoy the lovefest fans have again with UK Basketball!

 

[megablue]

This is just me but I'd like our guys to be more intentional looking for Brea when he's in the game. Bigs need to post simply to set something up for him & guards need to drive with the purpose of looking for him. His shot is SPECIAL...& should get 8 attempts from 3 every single game. He ought to be our one volume shooter.

Robinson takes some bad shots at times...to me Brea cannot take a bad shot. Seems like there's a shorter leash on Brea than Robinison.

Here are some three-point shooting metrics, including attempts and makes per minute of playing time.
It suggests to me that Brea, Carr and Oweh need to take more threes, with Robinson and Kriisa taking fewer. It's early, though.
Players ranked by minutes.

	MINS	3PT	3PTA	3PT%	ATT/MIN	MADE/MIN
CARR	150​	3​	8​	0.375​	0.053​	0.020​
ROBINSON	149​	13​	40​	0.325​	0.269​	0.087​
OWEH	144​	8​	18​	0.444​	0.125​	0.056​
BREA	136​	23​	34​	0.677​	0.250​	0.169​
BUTLER	132​	5​	14​	0.357​	0.106​	0.038​
WILLIAMS	116​	0​	0​	0.000​	0.000​	0.000​
GARRISON	111​	0​	5​	0.000​	0.045​	0.000​
KRIISA	92​	7​	24​	0.292​	0.261​	0.076​
ALMONOR	71​	7​	18​	0.389​	0.254​	0.099​
CHANDLER	61​	3​	10​	0.300​	0.164​	0.049​
PERRY	20​	1​	3​	0.333​	0.150​	0.050​
NOAH	18​	1​	4​	0.250​	0.222​	0.056​

 

[LineSkiCat14]

Im not too worried, but Duke in the 1st half and WKU did a good job of slowing us down, mucking it up, and I believe, generally exposing maybe a lack of overall talent. I still think we are missing the one complete offensive type player who you know can get you 20 to 25pts from all over the court. I think we have guys that CAN do this, but maybe not as easily when we're facing the nation's best teams in March.

I think this team is still really good, and Pope is clearly making them all look a little better than they probably are with his uptempo offense and general coaching ability. But I wonder if that might either run cold one night in the tournament and we get sent home

 

[Mike-D]

At least it took 6 games before people started freaking out and we still haven't lost. Wait till we do lose, some of these people will need a safe space

The few freaking out are either trolls or Calipari only fans.

 

[B.B.H.]

The few freaking out are either trolls or Calipari only fans.

Thank you for being honest and articulate. After we lose the first game, a lot of people are gonna show their true colors

 

[Mike-D]

Thank you for being honest and articulate. After we lose the first game, a lot of people are gonna show their true colors

We all know when JA will be back.

 

[B.B.H.]

We all know when JA will be back.

Who is JA? Is that a poster?

 

[BC_Wader]

I had to listen to the game and Leach made a comment about how it looks like the guys were looking forward to the turkey and fixins. I like to imagine the gameplay while listening and I thought we sounded like we played our worst game of the season. There was a lot of whistles and I'm sure that disrupted our flow but WKU was bringing the defense. Leach said something to the effect of WKU was like a 1st round tournament opponent and was laying it all out on the line and I thought that was a good comparison. We needed a game like this though I feel. I'm sure Pope will use the game as a teaching moment.

 

[JwUKFan11]

People that don’t think there will be least 6 SEC losses aren’t paying attention or are in fantasy land. This is a good team but there are plenty of other good teams in the SEC.

 

[Mike-D]

Who is JA? Is that a poster?

@JAPierce_2

 

[jeffky]

Really a thread about our weaknesses sounds trollish

 

[Seth_C]

We won. We didn’t play to our strength because the other team was specifically focused on that. We played to take what they were giving us, and it led to mistakes. It’s very early in the season. Two teams have played to try to take away our outside shooting. In both instances we took what they gave us and won. One of those games was against Duke.

I understand your concern. I don’t think you should be so concerned.

 

[Anthony B]

It was a good game for them. They need to be pushed by some better competition. They won't be blowing everyone out by 30 going forward. Last year we had a team full of shooters and we thought surely they wouldn't all go cold in the same game. But it happened and we should not have been shocked. When we play someone with a lot of beef inside AND the outside shots are not falling, we have a good chance of losing. But now we have a much better coach who should be able to scheme up something to be competitive at least.

 

[NerlensCat]

I know the game was never in doubt. However, observation reminded me of our game against Oakland. It seemed the game plan was to take advantage of the inside superiority. So, the offense that has been spectacular by an inside out game reversed to outside in which led to bad passes and turnovers. I will always be convinced that Reed's bad game occurred because he was Cal coached to get that ball to the paint players. It seemed to be similar against WKU and it also explained the missed 3's as they were rushed without the typical perimeter passing we had seen before. I will keep my fingers crossed that these issues will be corrected but it is the first game where I could see us losing to good teams.

I don’t think that was the game plan. That was just what was working. Pope makes adjustments based on what the opposing team gives him. He would rather be shooting 3’s, but they were extending guarding the 3 very hard, including many uncalled fouls in my opinion. So, the players and Pope did what they are supposed to do and pounded it inside. Harrison and Williams were a little better shooter, this would have been a 30 point game and they probably would have loosened up the 3 point defense. But to WKU’s credit they made it tough on us.

 

[Catfanlou]

I’m expecting to see a lot more lineup of Butler, Oweh, Brea, Robinson, Carr as the year progresses. We will lose some on defense, but with that lineup, Butler and Oweh will have the room to operate against these teams that are playing us out like this. I noticed yesterday that WKU was essentially doubling the handoff recipient when Williams was out top. He isn’t a threat to score and if he goes iso the offense becomes inefficient. If he doesn’t demonstrate some skill that makes him a threat there, it makes him almost unplayable in that action.

That’s my favorite lineup.

 

[TheBlueMist]

I was like "Sheesh, we are playing poorly" in the first half and then noticed that we still almost had 50 points. We are going to be okay.

 

[Edgarman]

I would be very surprised if we lose 6-7 games in the SEC. This is based on what we've seen so far. There will be tough games, for sure, and many like last night against the likes of UT, Auburn and someone like Vandy (from the hack-and-smack muck it up perspective). But to say we're likely to lose 6+ of them after what this team has showed us is extreme in my opinion.

I believe last night was one of our overall worse games and we still scored 87 and won by 19. 2nd worse game statistically was Duke, yet we also won. I can't imagine us playing worse than either of these two games, and I think WKU played WAY above their ceiling, which is a good thing because as many here have said, the way they played is a great trial for this UK team as we get closer to hack-and-grab teams in the SEC.

EVERY road game will be a war. Don't think otherwise. This will be true for every SEC team, including Auburn. They will lose whatgames they do lose on the road.

 

[chevyman 50]

This WKU team played good D even coach Pope bragged on it, hard to understand how this WKU team has lost 3 games.

 

[Cleatortoises]

I think we went inside so much because WKU took our outside game off the table, so to speak. Much like Duke tried to do. This will be the blueprint for other teams going forward: take away the 3-point attempts. I’m just glad that not many teams will be as effective as WKU was in that regard.

Once Pope realized the whistle was going to blow on every possession, we dialed back the 3's and made sure to go down low and take the ft's that are coming.
68 ft's is gross and not much fun to watch.
Victory, however, is the assignment.
Mission accomplished.
GBB!

 

[catsfanbgky]

Every single team we have played has had an “off night shooting.” Every single team has failed to make 40% from the field. What is the common denominator in all those off nights?

A ton of missed wide open looks by them. WKU missed too many open 3"s to count. Not to mention they missed several at the rim, or got got fouled at the rim. Thedford took inside a bunch of times, missed several open shots or got fouled (he shot 10 free throws).

 

[megablue]

To my view, so far into the season, the only significant weakness I've seen is that we might struggle a bit against quick teams with an aggressive man-to-man defense (without fouling) that will pressure both the three-point line and our ball-handling. Likewise, if they are quick, they may be tougher for us to defend ... especially off the dribble. Teams like that who can shoot the ball will be a difficult challenge for us, but I do not concede that we lose to them, of course. We can beat ANYBODY, no question !! I do think our bench might shorten against them, as CMP plays those suited to this type of game ... Butler and Oweh with significant minutes and needing to stay out of foul trouble. GO CATS !!

 

[GoAndRunIsGoneAndDone]

Nobody that I can think of wants to run up and down the court with us for 40 minutes. Some teams have the studs to do it but lack the stable(depth).
WKU did what a lot of teams will try to do to us and as long as we get a fair whistle, I'm not worried. We do have to make our free throws better than we did against wku, though.
Otherwise, it's just teams slowing the pace and disrupting the flow of the game to stay in it. They'll change if they start getting into foul trouble. Our depth will kill most teams, even without them having players foul out, so it's a double edged sword. If we hit our free throws, they'll stop fouling too. That style is one of desperation, just like end of game scenarios that we see all the time. We didn't shoot free throws well enough to punish that style of play. But overall, we're a good ft shooting team and should make teams that try it, pay.
This team is built for that style. Not that it's how we want to play, but that we are big, strong men with depth. It won't work often but teams will still have to try it, make us hit free throws and slow the pace. Our earliest games were crazy fast and short, time wise. Teams are trying to adjust to defending our style of play. I think the way to stop us is to slow the game way down to limit our possessions, but that's easier said than done already and will only get harder to do as our d improves as well as our guys learning the offense and each other better. Pope's style is really, really hard to defend and he hasn't even broke out the whole toolbox yet. Very few teams are built in a way that beats us if we can hit anything from outside and make free throws. A cold shooting night is what will beat us but we have so many shooters that even that is gonna be hard for teams to count on happening.

Just my thoughts and I'm positive there are others on here with more basketball knowledge than me, but it's easy to see that we are super hard to defend and have the depth to run teams to death. We have to improve though. Tourney games have too many tv timeouts and adrenaline to only rely on running their legs out from under them. The Auburn game will be a fight and basketball a bonus. I look for them to get very frustrated and lose their cool, if not a player or two.

 

[IL Wildcat]

8-29 from 3pt, and 13 missed FTs... and they still put up 87 points. It wasn't pretty, but still a solid win on an off night.

This is my answer as well. We still finished with 87 points, though we weren't making threes at our usual percentage, and they were fouling every time down the floor, but we were missing free throws. So, those become lost possessions.

The only complaint I had was the missed free throws. We've gotta make those free throws at a better percentage. If we shoot our normal percentage on those, we're in the mid-90s and would have won by 25, which is about what was expected. I'm not worried.