Show Me My Opponent, 2022-23: Kentucky (#1)

horns down

When this game was announced as the Chris Lofton Jersey Retirement Game months ago, it figured to be a coronation of sorts for two things: 1. Lofton’s amazing career that was long overdue for university recognition; 2. An elite matchup between #1 and #4 in KenPom’s preseason rankings.

Tennessee Basketball @Vol_Hoops

Chris knew something was up...

On January 13, this is now #44 at #2. One team has lived up to their analytical hype; the other is on pace to have one of the most underwhelming seasons for a preseason top-5 AP Poll team in modern history. (The last preseason top-5 team to miss the NCAA Tournament: 2012-13 Kentucky.) There’s a myriad of reasons for this; we’ll get into them. The biggest thing as I think about this game is that if you had told me how the next 12 months after The Massacre would’ve gone for Kentucky and John Calipari:

I never would have believed you. How tomorrow goes is ultimately up to chance, but the chance is heavily slanted in Tennessee’s favor; the projected point spread (per KenPom) of Tennessee -14 is the largest spread Tennessee has had in at least 30 years, and very likely further back, in this rivalry. There’s an 89% chance - 96% per Torvik - that a lot of bills are coming due. Hook ‘em.

BELOW THE LINE: my shirt that reads “Not involved with the Texas job” has a lot of people asking questions already answered by my shirt ($)

Kentucky’s offense

This has been the source of immense controversy, but in the college basketball sense of “controversy” which is that a subset of a mid-sized Southern city is extremely mad about it. Some believe that Kentucky’s offense is an outdated disaster that does nothing correctly but rebound thanks to being oversized; some believe that Kentucky’s offense is just fine and that other things (defense, team behavior, whatnot) are the Real Problem. The answer is probably closer to the latter, but I would cop out and say it’s in-between.

Kentucky’s offense is good in the sense that they rank out very well in three of the Four Factors and really do have guys that can hit deep balls. All of Antonio Reeves, Cason Wallace, Sahvir Wheeler, and C.J. Fredrick are at 38% or better from deep on at least 2.5 attempts per game. The last Kentucky squad that could say they’ve done the same is none of them; if that holds it’s the first time in program history. Oscar Tshiebwe remains a force on the offensive boards. Wheeler passes the ball well. All of that is good.

Kentucky’s offense is bad in the sense that, despite those four shooters being on the roster, Kentucky somehow takes fewer threes than anyone not named Arkansas in the conference. Their rim and three rate, per Shot Quality, ranks 342nd in America. They once again rank #1 in the conference in mid-range jumpers attempted. Also, there is real evidence that they’ve run up the proverbial score with their offense against bad competition; Torvik ranks their offense against Top 100 competition 180th, even adjusted for schedule, and they seem incapable of getting easy twos like older Kentucky teams would.

All of that brings us to the centerpiece in Tshiebwe (16 PPG, 13.1 RPG), having close to the National Player of the Year season he had a year ago but feeling like he’s taken a step back. It’s natural, because replicating that exact season would’ve been brutally hard. Younger readers know the Joe Burrow meme I’m referencing, but a lot of Kentucky possessions have a “screw it, Oscar’s down there somewhere” feel to them.

Tshiebwe remains his usual terrific self when in single coverage post-ups; he’s responsible for a lot of Kentucky’s rim gravity. The problem occurs when defenses work to get the ball out of Tshiebwe’s hands. His efficiency plummets dramatically when doubled - like, 0.4 points per possession (PPP) level drop - and he’s prone to committing really bad turnovers in those situations. After averaging 12 FGA a game last year, he’s taken 12 field goal attempts or more in just one of UK’s last six.

Wallace (11.6 PPG, questionable to play with back spasms) is the other headliner you know of, partially from a contentious recruiting battle between Tennessee and Kentucky. Wallace is a serious contender for Kentucky’s best shooter, hitting 42% from deep on 4.6 attempts per game, and he does provide a real sense of quality and calm when on offense. Wallace is the only reliable, somewhat consistent three-level scorer on this roster, but his favorite place to operate is obviously from downtown. Calipari likes running these simple dribble handoffs for Wallace to free him up:

Reeves (11.8 PPG) is the third guy I’m profiling. Kentucky’s transition offense isn’t as dangerous as it has been at times in the past, but when it’s working it’s because of Reeves. He has 70 points in transition this year, per Synergy; no other player has more than 43. Reeves has a similar shooting preference to Wallace but is far less efficient inside the perimeter. Largely, though, Kentucky looks for excuses to utilize his quick release.

The three other guys you’re bound to know/hear a lot about on offense are, in order, Jacob Toppin (10.9 PPG, 6.1 RPG, questionable to play), Wheeler (9.5 PPG, 6.3 APG), and C.J. Fredrick (7.8 PPG). Toppin has been the go-to power forward for most of the season but is an abysmal shooter with a career 26% hit rate on threes; he’s been most effective on backdoor and basket cuts. Wheeler is the controversial point guard who is hyper-chaotic but also very speedy. Alongside Wallace, he’s the main threat on ball screens. Fredrick is borderline Just A Shooter but does step inside the arc to hit a mid-range jumper from time to time; it is beyond imperative that Tennessee does not let a career 45% deep shooter get loose. Holding him to three 3PT attempts or less is the goal.

You can see where the good things come from when it’s working. If Tshiebwe is cooking inside and walloping opponents on the boards, that draws enough gravity to him to free up Kentucky’s shooters. That’s just not often the case against quality competition. When opponents are forcing Tshiebwe into less-efficient looks away from the basket, Kentucky’s offense doesn’t get the space needed for open shots.

Along with this, Calipari has a confusing desire to fill all of his time at power forward with Toppin (career 26% deep shooter), Lance Ware (0-for-1 and kind of terrible), and Daimion Collins (0-for-6 and absolutely terrible). You can play a 3.5-shooter lineup in college basketball and be fine, but those 1.5 non-shooters need to feature two really good bigs. Kentucky has one.

There is no indication of Calipari trying out Chris Livingston (35% from deep) at the 4. There is no desire to play Wallace, Fredrick, and Reeves together (zero possessions since Florida A&M in mid-December!) despite that being a tremendous offensive threesome on paper. There is no interest of a four-shooter lineup surrounding the one big in Tshiebwe. And there is no sign that, at 64, Calipari is willing to change his beliefs. Perhaps the 68-year-old on the other sideline could give him a few tips.

CHART! Per a suggestion from a loyal reader, I’ve included their career percentages and FGM/FGA at each level to add appropriate context. Hope this helps, open to refining it of course. I kind of like the idea of using emojis?

Kentucky’s defense

Contrary to the offense, which really does have some great things going for it other programs would be jealous of, this defense stinks big time. Kentucky has played six Top 100 opponents; none have been held below 0.95 PPP. In contrast, Tennessee is 6-for-8 in doing that to their Top 100 competition, with three being held to 0.8 PPP or worse. One of these teams simply looks far more structurally sound than the other.

What Kentucky’s gonna run is the same thing they always run: man-to-man in half-court, some press looks here or there, a good amount of runners/pull-up jumpers forced. The shot quality itself that Kentucky gives up isn’t that bad. The effort in forcing said shots, particularly against decent competition, is. Top 100 opponents are shooting nearly 59% at the rim against Kentucky, which used to be the most vaunted, scariest defense you had to deal with in the early 2010s. The Kentucky of old had rim protectors who would demolish your shot and laugh in your face. The Kentucky of 2023 has Oscar Tshiebwe, a sweet-hearted young man who is not a shot-blocker.

Kentucky has not held any opponent below 0.95 PPP since Bellarmine on November 29; Tennessee has held 13 of 16 opponents below 0.9. If it were a run of play based on really bad shooting luck I’d be willing to hear it out; I figure loyal readers know my thoughts on shooting variance by now. To be sure, allowing top 100 teams to shoot 37% from deep is unlucky (they average about 35%), and teams since that Bellarmine game have shot 41% from deep. I really do not believe Kentucky can control that.

But they can surely be far, far better than this as a rim defense. Those nine opponents - again, this includes Yale, Florida A&M, Louisville, and South Carolina - are shooting 61% at the rim. There are no ball-stoppers, which means ball-screen defense is a disaster given Kentucky’s talent.

The problem is that it just seems structural. Kentucky’s tried various coverages with Oscar, most commonly settling on a drop coverage where he stays in the paint, but none of it has seemed to consistently work. I actually think this is an area where Cal’s insistence on playing multiple non-shooters is more of a defensive problem than anything on offense.

When playing any two of Oscar, Ugonna Onyenso, Lance Ware, or Collins, Kentucky’s giving up an opponent-adjusted 1.035 PPP defensively. It’s got zero effect on rim FG% and they’re actively worse at defensive rebounding. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these lineups have given up more open threes throughout the season. When you have two guys who can’t move fast playing defense, you either better hope the other team’s 4 isn’t a shooter for some reason or isn’t fast. If he’s one or both…well, there’s a reason Arizona’s defense sucks, too. Lance Ware may as well be in his own world here.

I despise calling teams soft, as I am not in the locker room and do not totally know the ins and outs of any given program. But I really think there’s either an effort issue, a structural/coaching issue, or a mega-storm of both. Synergy has this team with one of the worst Guarded/Unguarded ratios (47%/53%) in all of America. Only 20 teams give up more second-chance points per game, again per Synergy. They’re about average at forcing turnovers despite Cason Wallace having one of the best steal rates out there. Two of their worst play types - spot-ups and off-ball screens - happen to be two of Tennessee’s best.

Could this be fixed? Sure. I do think Kentucky’s been victim to some rough shooting luck at times. They’re predictably solid at defending post-ups because, again, they play multiple bigs at once. Maybe Tshiebwe, who was a better shot blocker a year ago, rediscovers his defensive form. Maybe Daimion Collins does the same. Maybe any of Wheeler/Fredrick/Wallace/Reeves step up. But it just seems so much further away and unrealistic than it should, doesn’t it?

How Tennessee matches up

Tennessee’s generally been good at finding the one or two things Kentucky doesn’t do well on defense and hammering those over and over until Calipari adjusts. Last year it was running tons of off-ball screens and basket cuts while forcing Kentucky to come out and defend the perimeter; in 2018-19 it was using the pick-and-roll more than they ever had before to exploit UK’s huge issues there. The problem for 2023 may be that there’s so many things you can exploit they might get overwhelmed.

The teams whose shots I’ve liked most against Kentucky - Alabama, Missouri, UCLA, even Yale - were all very much unafraid of getting to the rim. All four of those got 40% or greater of their shot attempts at the rim, and CBB Analytics has it as those four teams getting an astounding 51.5% of their shots in the paint. Given that Kentucky is surrendering an unreal (for them) 34.6 PPG in the paint to top 100 opponents, you know where this is going.

Tennessee simply has to go and get theirs early and often. This is, by points scored, the best off-ball screen offense in America (per Synergy) versus the 338th-best off-ball screen defense. That works on the perimeter, obviously, but Tennessee has found a lot of success this year in using these screens to generate drives to the rim, particularly with the likes of Julian Phillips and Santiago Vescovi. In particular, a potential Phillips/Reeves matchup is one Tennessee should heartily chase after. You’ll see the usual diet of cuts to the basket from posts and guards in this one as well.

On the perimeter, Tennessee has a variety of ways to create good looks, but the best we’ve seen this season have frequently resulted from inside-out paint touches. Tennessee’s actual post-up efficiency when a big goes to the rim is solid, but it’s been even more effective when the bigs pass it out for an open three. Olivier Nkamhoua alone has generated 12 made threes this season from his post-ups. Given what we know about Kentucky’s penchant for giving up a bunch of these open looks, it would be quite ideal for Tennessee to hammer it until UK adjusts. If they do.

Last comes the defensive portion of this. In some aspect it’s a simple scout: don’t let Tshiebwe score in single coverage, get the ball out of his hands as often as possible, guard the threes and hope for the best. But it’s more complicated than that, because this Kentucky team that frankly should be taking at least five more threes a game than they do. In the event they choose to do that - unlikely - Tennessee’s gotta be prepared to hedge a little.

Kentucky’s first goal is to get to the rim; their second goal is to generate a high-quality jumper. Confusingly, this can mean a mid-range jumper to them, but to each their own. The point is that you’re gonna see the ball hit Tshiebwe’s hands in the post a lot to start. Towards the end of possessions, there’s more ball-screens and mid-range jumpers, but the first hope is that Tshiebwe can barrel his way inside.

I trust that Tennessee knows this; the next thing is to prevent Kentucky from running one of their excellent hand-off actions that seems to be one of the few things that works game-over-game. The only team Tennessee has faced that ran many of these at all was Kansas and they did well against it, but it’s still a small sample. If Tennessee can effectively turn these hand-offs into a parade of mid-range jumpers, I think Rick Barnes and staff are going to be really happy.

Look: if Kentucky turns into a tremendous mid-range offense overnight, it is what it is. That’s out of your control. The point here is to force a bad process, which should result in a bad result (for the opponent) more often than not. I doubt that Kentucky is going to shoot 14-for-24 from mid-range (as they did against South Carolina) again, not after a season in which they’re below the national average in said category. This is an identity battle, and I think I speak for many in that I’m a lot more confident in Tennessee’s identity than I am Kentucky’s.

Expected starters + rotations

For Kentucky, Cason Wallace (back) and Jacob Toppin (shoulder) are questionable. (Toppin normally starts.)

Key matchups

Oscar Tshiebwe vs. Jonas Aidoo/Uros Plavsic. Awaka may very well get some run here but the total over/under feels like six minutes? Lineups with Aidoo have proven significantly more effective at limiting both rim attempts and efficiency; I would prefer to see him get the majority of minutes here. However, Plavsic is a better offensive player and draws more fouls. Both will be of use.

Cason Wallace vs. Santiago Vescovi. This could easily be Vescovi vs. C.J. Fredrick as well, which would be a repeat of the Kellan Grady matchup a year ago. Vescovi is utterly relentless on defense, which is great until he commits a bad foul but is still an obvious plus. Kentucky’s offense is far better with Wallace on the court but he’s been a terrible defender since SEC play began.

Sahvir Wheeler vs. Zakai Zeigler. Wheeler has played 35+ minutes in five straight games. Kentucky fans hate hearing it but their offense is way better when he’s on the court. Simultaneously, he is a 5’9” point guard that literally every SEC player can shoot over and consistently grades out as a meh defender. Fun matchup.

Three things to watch for

Shooting variance, both ways. I mean, eventually someone will hit threes on Tennessee. It very well could be a Kentucky team that sits at 30th nationally in 3PT%. But: this is also a Kentucky team that entered the year with a career 3PT% of 35.3%. I’ll set their over/under at 30%? You shoot about 3% worse on the road compared to at home on average, FWIW.

The Tshiebwe plan. Tennessee rarely doubles in the post and has continued that trend this year, but Tshiebwe is a rare breed. They got away with it fine last year and I’m curious to see if Tennessee’s content to match Tshiebwe on Aidoo/Uros and focus on keeping him off the offensive boards instead.

Points in the paint. A reminder that this is KENTUCKY, who returned National Player of the Year Oscar Tshiebwe. And yet: in their five games versus Quad 1 competition, they’ve lost the paint points battle in four of the five by an average of 8.4 PPG. These teams are scoring with ease at the rim against them. Does that happen again, or does Kentucky buck up?

Three predictions

1. Tshiebwe manages a respectable double-double of 13 points/13 rebounds while committing four fouls;

2. Julian Phillips gets the KenPom game MVP;

3. Tennessee 76, Kentucky 61.