Kentucky reportedly spent $22 million on its basketball roster. Why isn’t it working?

Kentucky coach Mark Pope built what is believed to be the most expensive team ever in college basketball.

And what once felt like a flex has now turned into a scarlet letter.

The $22 million basketball team that cannot beat a respectable opponent. The $22 million basketball team that doesn’t appear to have any surefire NBA-level players on the floor. The $22 million basketball team that lost a game by 35 to an opponent that lost its previous game by 40.

Kentucky reportedly spent $22 million on its basketball roster this season and entered with championship expectations because of it. Entering Saturday’s game against Indiana, the Wildcats are 6-4 and have lost all four of their games against ranked opponents. A week ago was the low point, with Gonzaga drilling Kentucky 94-59 in Nashville in front of a largely UK contingent, who voiced their displeasure with boos throughout.

A year ago, Pope built a team Kentucky fans fell in love with. The Cats played fast, made a lot of 3s, spaced and cut and played together. No one seemed to care who scored. Roles were defined quickly.

This is the opposite, a collection of players who don’t seem to fit the system or fit together.

The Athletic spoke with several high-major coaches familiar with Kentucky, watched UK’s games and listened back to Pope’s news conferences to understand the issues and what Kentucky must do to salvage its still-young season.

Pope’s intention in building this year’s roster was clear: While last year’s team, which reached the Sweet 16, could score, the defense wasn’t good enough to compete for championships, so he set out to build one that could.

But now the skilled big man and shooters that thrive in Pope’s system are missing. And the defense isn’t any better than it was a year ago. In games that matter, it’s even worse.

Kentucky is dealing with injuries. Jayden Quaintance, a projected lottery pick at center, has yet to play and just started practicing this week. He is the only UK player projected to go in the first round of The Athletic’s latest mock draft. Point guard Jaland Lowe, arguably the best offensive addition out of the portal, has missed six games with a shoulder injury and has played over 20 minutes just one time. Starting power forward Mouhamed Dioubate has missed the last five games with a high ankle sprain. And Otega Oweh, the preseason SEC Player of the Year, has not missed a game but did miss 10 weeks of the preseason with turf toe.

But what’s most troubling about this start is a lack of consistent effort and fight. Listen to Pope’s news conferences, and he’s exasperated at what’s taking place.

“That competitive spirit, man, I’ve done a poor job of getting that out of our guys in games, which has been monumentally frustrating for me,” Pope said on Tuesday after a blowout win over North Carolina Central. “But we’ll get it out. We’re going to find it or we’re going to die trying.”

The issues start on defense

The defensive effort has to improve for Kentucky to have a chance against quality competition. In the Wildcats’ four losses, they’re allowing 1.21 points per possession. Compared to other teams in KenPom’s top 25, that’s comfortably the worst against high-major competition. (Vandy is next at 1.14 PPP in two games against high-major opponents.)

Kentucky needs to be better there, but the defense also needs to help the offense. Kentucky struggles in half-court offense and would benefit from more transition opportunities created by its defense.

“I think we’re leaving a lot on the table in terms of how disruptive we can be,” Pope said after the fourth game of the season against Eastern Illinois.

When Quaintance and Dioubate return, Pope will be able to play lineups that should be able to overwhelm opponents with their length and activity. That was the vision.

Pope has never coached a defense that generated a high percentage of turnovers, and it’s going to take a change in approach to get there. And Kentucky showed a shift Tuesday against North Carolina Central, a possible glimpse into how Pope is going to try to create a more attacking defense. The Cats have struggled in ball-screen coverage. In their four losses, opponents are scoring 1.1 points per possession in the pick-and-roll, per Synergy. (That’d rank 355th if it was the season-long number.) They’ve been sloppy both on the ball and behind it.

On Tuesday, instead of playing UK’s center occasionally at the level of the screen or in drop coverage, trying to defend most ball screens two-on-two without involving help defenders, the Cats hedged a majority of the ball screens that involved the center. When it’s right, it looks like this, meeting the roller early:

To guard this way, all five players have to be involved. To start, someone has to tag the roller, and on the very first play on Tuesday, not one Wildcat went to the roller:

Later, Denzel Aberdeen was the tag and Trent Noah’s job was to slow the roller with an early bump. Noah missed and Aberdeen was way late:

“I was disappointed with our on-ball ball-screen pressure,” Pope said. “We need to be way more up the line, way more aggressive to turn a guy around rather than let him kind of pick us apart. I felt like our third defender was hit or miss, and they did a good job spacing the floor where the floor was really overloaded, so you just have your third defender just naked on the weak side and we have to make that play and we didn’t tonight for the most part.”

Once Quaintance is back and moving like he could before — assuming that’ll happen this season — he should help impact the ball when the screen occurs, but the players behind the ball are not going to change. Too often, the communication is lacking at the point of the screen — the Cats run straight into screens at an alarming rate — and then the help feels half-hearted.

The communication and willingness to make multiple efforts need to improve drastically.

Issues in transition defense

Kentucky’s best chance this season is to win with defense, and there needs to be an urgency to get a stop every single possession. And there hasn’t been an urgency yet, most evident by the way Kentucky gets back on defense.

There are countless examples of the Cats just lollygagging back in transition defense. Pope addressed the lack of hustle in a very public way in the Eastern Illinois game, pulling the second unit and putting the starters back in with 1:44 left when ahead by 46.

That was on Nov. 14.

Here is Dec. 2:

Lots of pointing. Not a lot of effort.

Often, it’s just getting soundly beaten in a foot race:

Three days later, same issue:

“It just doesn’t necessarily look like they’re excited to go to war together,” said an SEC coach, granted anonymity to speak openly. “I think there’s probably some confusion on what the expectation is from a leadership standpoint, and maybe they don’t have it. But that’s the concern. When you’re trying to build your team out of the portal every year, you might lose that kind of competitive fire for the front of the jersey and I think they’re trying to find themselves that way.”

Pope has said they emphasize the first three steps, but something is not getting through, and he tried to make a point of it again on Tuesday, benching Garrison after this happened.

“We just have a lot of growing we have to do right now,” Pope said when asked about the benching. “We’ll grow. We have good guys. We have competitive guys. We don’t know really what it means to compete yet, which is terrifying, but we’ll learn. We’re gonna learn. We’re gonna learn fast.”

Pope is saying the right things, but for some reason, it’s not translating to the floor. And judging by Pope’s demeanor, he has shifted from positive reinforcement to demanding that effort. Once it becomes consistent, maybe then we’ll see the vision actually take shape.

Kentucky’s shooting woes

The offense is where the problems really start with the roster build. Pope plays a five-out style that relies on spacing and the bigs being able to initiate. Last year, he landed four players who had all made 80-plus 3s in a season and were lifetime 35 percent-plus 3-point shooters.

The most accomplished shooters on this roster coming into the year? Denzel Aberdeen, a career 33.5 percent shooter whose 36 made 3s last year was a career high, and Otega Oweh, a solid 36.2 percent shooter for his career but one who made just 27 last year, also a career high.

Last year, Kentucky had an NBA-level 3-point shooter in Koby Brea. But not this year. This has created spacing issues. Defenses can pack the paint because there’s not the fear that players like Brea and Jaxson Robinson created. This has taken away the effectiveness of Kentucky’s cutting and made it hard to get paint touches.

There’s not a lot of rhythm or pace in half-court possessions. The timing is off.

When Oweh gets the ball on this possession below, these are the 3-point looks that Kentucky’s offense is supposed to produce:

But there are two problems. One, Collin Chandler doesn’t cut early enough to give Oweh more time and space. Also, Oweh has a slow release and needs time, so he doesn’t feel comfortable taking that shot.

When this offense is at its best, the ball is moving side to side and there are sacrificial cuts that open up shots for others. But too often, Kentucky is missing one-mores and the player who is supposed to cut (first Oweh, then Chandler in the possession below) isn’t processing quickly enough that it’s time to cut and punish the help-side defender in the paint:

On both swings to Andrija Jelavic, the player next to him should be cutting when the pass is mid-flight and Jelavic should be looking to one-more to the corner. Instead, Jelavic forces a bad shot.

Last year, the offense flowed so well because of the passing of Amari Williams and Andrew Carr, two proven playmakers. While Dioubate cannot shoot, he’s comfortable hitting cutters and initiating dribble hand-offs from his time at Alabama. But this is not a natural spot for centers Malachi Moreno and Brandon Garrison.

Even when the offense functions perfectly, like Garrison getting the ball here on a short roll and Jelavic cutting from the corner, this is what happens when it’s not a natural passer in that spot:

Quaintance and Dioubate getting healthy might not solve the problem. Quantaince had a 10.6 assist rate at Arizona State, meaning he assisted on 10.6 percent of his teammates’ baskets while on the floor. Williams had a 17.0 and 24.6 assist rate in his previous two years at Drexel before transferring to Kentucky.

Through 10 games last season, Williams and Carr had combined for 48 assists. Through 10 games this year, the starting bigs (a rotating group so far) have 30 assists, and only five in the four losses.

The season-long shooting numbers do not look terrible, but in the four games against legit competition, Kentucky is shooting it poorly.

Despite not having as much shooting as last year, Kentucky’s 3-point rate is actually higher than last year — 43.4 percent of the attempts are coming from deep, compared to 41.2 last year — and teams with high 3-point rates generally shoot well inside the arc.

But in games that have mattered, particularly the last three against Michigan State, North Carolina and Gonzaga, Kentucky’s guards are struggling to get downhill, and when they do, they’re often making poor paint decisions.

Forced shots at the rim like this one when Oweh has Moreno wide open for a dumpoff:

Or this floater from freshman Jasper Johnson when Oweh is wide open in the corner:

“Everything gets so clogged up, it’s hard to make great rim decisions when the guy you’re gonna kick it out to is not a threat,” a second SEC coach said.

If there’s a fix, or, at the very least, a way to give the offense some direction, it’s Lowe. A transfer from Pittsburgh, he has feel and vision. Pope might have to adjust his five-out preference for a more pick-and-roll heavy scheme with Lowe dominating the ball, but he’s probably Kentucky’s best shot at generating quality shots. While Kentucky could barely make anything against Gonzaga, there was a stretch with Lowe running things in the first half where the Cats were getting good looks.

The other issue is Lowe’s availability. Even if he plays through his shoulder injury, will it ever allow him to play to his abilities?

Johnson could also become more important. While his decision-making can be questionable and he needs space to be at his best, the second SEC coach believed Johnson has the most NBA talent. He’s the best penetrator of the group and he’s coming off his best game — 22 points against NC Central — but the ideal role for him is more of a microwave sixth man.

Oweh is the leading scorer and was supposed to be the star, but that’s not really his game. He thrived a year ago in transition and attacking on the second or third side against long closeouts, and those opportunities aren’t really presenting themselves. Moreno has been able to produce against inferior competition, but he’s yet to reach double digits against a high-major opponent. And none of the big men have a history of scoring with their back to the basket.

That’s where Kentucky is offensively. And for this team to be at its best, it has to get used to winning grimy games with its defense.

Mark Pope and Kentucky were ranked in the top 10 in the preseason, but have fallen out of the AP Top 25. (Ishika Samant / Getty Images)

Where does Kentucky go from here?

While it seems like doomsday right now in Lexington, the good news for Kentucky is that the SEC is not nearly as good as it was a year ago and this is still probably a team that will finish in the top half of the league. Fifth place seems realistic.

And while Kentucky has lost every time it has played a quality opponent, those teams are also all currently ranked in the top 14. Kentucky faces only one team (Alabama) currently ranked that high the rest of the season.

“They’re so talented that the noise is going to get so loud that some of those guys are gonna get tired of everybody questioning their heart that I think it will sort itself out,” the second SEC coach said. “So they’re gonna beat some pretty good teams in the SEC, I feel like, because they’re so talented. But I don’t know if they’re gonna be able to put enough together to win enough to satisfy a $22 million roster.”

The noise would be loud for any Kentucky team struggling like this, but the vitriol has likely reached another level because of that number. Pope is going to get questioned more for his roster-building choices because of it.

But it’s also worth pointing out that Pope is only in his second year at Kentucky. At BYU, he did not have the money to spend and wasn’t recruiting the type of players the Kentucky brand can attract. He was also used to coaching older, experienced teams and he always prioritized shooting.

If there’s a lesson to be learned, Pope probably needs to be more intentional in recruiting players who fit his system.

And if there’s a reason for UK fans not to give up, consider the defending national champion.

Florida missed the NCAA Tournament in Todd Golden’s first season and started 4-3 in his second. Those Gators finished 24-12 and 11-7 in the SEC — likely realistic targets for Kentucky — and lost in the first round in the NCAA Tournament. Golden made a few smart portal pickups, developed the players he had and won a national championship in his third year.

Pope has the resources to swing it quickly. It’s hard to see too high a ceiling this year, but the floor might not be as low as everyone thinks it is right now.