Kentucky men’s basketball head coach Mark Pope took a different approach to roster-building this offseason, but he still wants to do whatever he can to ensure his team shoots as many three-pointers as possible — the method to pull it off is just going to look a little bit different than it did in 2024-25.
When Pope accepted the job in April 2024, it didn’t take him long to set goals for his debut season. One of them was to shoot 30 three-pointers per game, a lofty mark for the vast majority of teams across the country. Kentucky ended up attempting a respectable 25.3 triples per game, which ranked 78th nationally, while connecting on 37.5 percent of those looks. Only five teams ended up meeting or surpassing the 30 three-pointers per game threshold, with just one of them (the team UK beat in the Round of 32, Illinois) making the NCAA Tournament.
Three-point shooting was a strength of Pope’s debut team in Lexington. While the 2025-26 team will still boast plenty of capable shooters, it might not be a “strength” despite having a more talented overall roster on paper, but it’s something the staff and players will once again strive to replicate. Pope’s final BYU team is the only one he’s coached that shot more than 30 triples per contest.
“One of our strengths (last season) was making threes,” Kentucky associate head coach Alvin Brooks III said this week on KSR’s Sources Say podcast. “We made the most threes in Kentucky history. We want to try to continue the strengths that we had from last year, but also improve on the things we could have done better last year.”
The Wildcats had Jaxson Robinson and Koby Brea taking up the bulk of the outside shooting duties last season. Those two attempted 165 and 214 three-pointers, respectively. When healthy, they ranked among the top three in minutes played on the team. They were threats to chuck up shots from well beyond the arc. Robinson and Brea combined to shoot 11.8 threes per outing and made them at a high clip. They were inarguably two of Kentucky’s five or six best players when available.
Kentucky has plenty of guys on the 2025-26 roster who can feasibly shoot 35 percent or better from deep, but most of them will either do so on low volume or fill in off the bench. If the Wildcats’ starting five to begin the season looks like Jaland Lowe, Otega Oweh, Denzel Aberdeen, Mo Dioubate, and Brandon Garrison, that’s not exactly a three-point friendly lineup. None of them is what you would label as a “sniper”.
Lowe actually attempted the most threes of any of his new UK teammates last season, making just 26.6 percent of his 154 looks at Pitt. Aberdeen is probably the most reliable of that bunch after knocking down 35 percent of his 103 three-point attempts last season at Florida. Oweh’s three-point shooting numbers dipped by conference play to 33.3 percent. Dioubate and Garrison are willing to shoot, but they need open looks.
That group of five averaged just 11.5 three-pointers per game combined last season, lower than what Robinson and Brea were able to do as a duo in the blue and white. We should expect that number to grow in 2025-26 (someone has to take the shots), but not substantially. That’s not a bad thing by any means, but it could mean three-point shooting is done more by committee and from the bench next season than compared to last.
Simply put, a couple of Kentucky’s best players last season were high-level shooters. This year, the team’s best players can make them from deep, but mostly excel in other areas (although there is hope Lowe’s numbers tick way up). They’ll all be capable shooters, just not guys you expect to knock the lights out.
That’s where an emphasis on offensive rebounding comes in to help at least maintain the consistency of three-point attempts.
“I think we want to get threes up no matter what. We’re gonna shoot, we’re gonna shoot threes no matter what team we have,” Brooks continued. “Because we know we’re gonna shoot, we have to do a better job of getting offensive rebounds when we miss and we want to try to get a second shot and a third shot and a fourth shot, fifth shot. Take up to nine shots, it doesn’t matter.
“So we want to make sure that every time we shoot, we have an opportunity to get another shot. The team that get the most uncontested shots, normally have a better chance to win.”
Kentucky ranked 229th nationally last season in offensive rebounding rate at 28.2 percent. Amari Williams was the most effective offensive rebounder with a solid rate of 10.3. This year’s roster will feature guys who are even better at attacking the offensive glass, like Dioubate (13.0 offensive rebounding percentage last season) and Jayden Quaintance (11.8), plus other high-level rebounders such as Andrija Jelavić and Malachi Moreno, who should create additional second-chance shots for their teammates.
The opportunity for more second-chance three-pointers will be there for the ‘Cats in 2025-26. The thing is, Kentucky’s best outside shooters will likely come off the bench, at least early in the season. Kam Williams shot 41.2 percent at Tulane last season (and could very well have a breakout campaign), Trent Noah and Collin Chandler expect to up their numbers in that category, and freshman Jasper Johnson is known as an outside shooter.
How the playing time of those four is distributed could play a large factor in Kentucky being able to shoot 25 three-pointers (or more) per game like last season. We can even add Jelavić (a 30.5 percent outside shooter overseas last season) into that group, as well. Individually, none of them will shoot as many threes as Robinson or Brea did, but together, they could.
This was the long way of saying yes, Kentucky is still going to shoot a ton of three-pointers this season, but don’t be surprised if most of them come from players not in the starting five.
