Breaking down Kentuckys early-season offensive problems

April 17, 2024

John Calipari was flabbergasted at his team’s lack of execution in Sunday’s 88-72 loss to Gonzaga, and he should be. Because what Calipari is running is not complicated.

Kentucky’s offensive woes, however, are not all on the team. Some of it goes on the coach and his reluctance to modernize his lineups. Kentucky has spacing issues, because Calipari plays big lineups with multiple non-shooters. He also runs actions that are easy to scout and leave his players flummoxed when the first option isn’t there.

Calipari has weapons, but his talent is not overwhelming this season. Some years one of the better recruiting classes in the country will produce John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins, or Karl Anthony-Towns, Devin Booker, Trey Lyles and Tyler Ulis. This isn’t one of those classes, and not every hired sniper out of the transfer portal is the same either. Antonio Reeves is not Kellan Grady.

This season was hyped, however, because of the return of National Player of the Year Oscar Tshiebwe. And for good reason. Tshiebwe is a weapon unlike any other in college hoops, but thus far Calipari isn’t putting ideal lineups around him. Tshiebwe isn’t helping himself either; his timing is still off after returning from injury.

The byproduct is an offense that’s disjointed and hard to watch. And the Gonzaga game, particularly the first half, was a clinic on what not to do on the offensive end and a good place to examine what exactly is wrong with the Wildcats.

Bad timing

Kentucky opened the game with what appears to be a zoom action. Cason Wallace was supposed to come off a Jacob Toppin screen, then receive a dribble handoff from Tshiebwe. Calipari said he diagrammed it multiple times before the game, and yet his team could not execute it. The issue starts with Tshiebwe. As soon as he catches the ball, he should start dribbling toward the left wing in preparation for the handoff. Instead, he starts late, and the handoff is bobbled. After the handoff, Tshiebwe is supposed to roll to the left block. Wallace throws back to Toppin immediately, and ideally, Tshiebwe’s defender will be trailing him, allowing him to seal and have an angle. This is what happens instead:

When the initial action doesn’t occur, Tshiebwe ends up standing and watching his teammates play four-around-one without any movement and the Wildcats end up with a late-clock contested 3.

Good offense gets the defense moving and in scramble mode. Calipari’s offense is elementary. There’s rarely ball or body movement before the desired action. It’s stale, and the defense basically just needs to execute basic shell drill principles.

Here’s a high ball screen early on against Gonzaga:

Notice there’s only 19 seconds left when Tshiebwe goes to set the high ball screen. (Wasting early clock waiting for instruction from the sideline is another one of UK’s issues. Later in the game, it results in a CJ Fredrick turnover as his teammates look confused trying to get set.) In this play above, ideally, Tshiebwe would set a screen that would make Rasir Bolton fight over, giving Sahvir Wheeler an advantage. He doesn’t make any contact, so Bolton can go under and Anton Watson doesn’t have to provide any support. When Wheeler throws it back to Tshiebwe, Toppin should know that Tshiebwe is a right-handed driver. He should switch from the right short corner to the left, giving Tshiebwe a lane. With Fredrick in the right corner, Gonzaga likely isn’t going to give any support on the right side of the floor for fear of leaving Fredrick. Because Toppin never moved, even if Tshiebwe had beaten Watson off the dribble, Drew Timme was there to help.

When Tshiebwe was cut off, he probably should have thrown the ball back out to Wheeler and forced Bolton into a long closeout. But this is something else Kentucky does poorly: Extra passes are a rarity.

It’s just not ingrained in Kentucky to swing the ball from side to side, working for a better shot. Instead, the Wildcats stand.

Watch below as Fredrick and Lance Ware play a two-man game on one side of floor — what do Reeves and Toppin do on the other side?

They stand. It makes help-side defense for their defenders (Watson and Bolton) easy, because they can focus on the action without worrying about their men, then easily recover once the ball does change sides. Another possession ends in a contested jumper.

Hard for Oscar to eat

It’s clear the one thing that has been prioritized to the Kentucky players is to feed Tshiebwe as much as possible. The issue there is that Kentucky’s players appear poorly trained in how to get that done, and Calipari isn’t exactly an expert at the art of deception.

Watch this video below twice. First, simply watch the Gonzaga sideline. The coaches know exactly what’s coming. SEC coaches say Kentucky is the easiest team in the conference to scout.

Now watch the execution. Often, Kentucky’s guards feed Tshiebwe too far out and with no angle, as they stand around and watch:

Their timing is also off.

Sometimes that’s because they play like robots — funny, because one of Calipari’s favorite lines is his players are not machines or robots — but when they run a play, they look pre-programmed.

When Wheeler gets the ball in this clip below, notice how open Tshiebwe is:

The end result might look like a decent shot, because Wheeler is wide-open. But Gonzaga treated Wheeler like a non-shooter and was willing to live with these looks.

Here’s another missed opportunity that didn’t go to Tshiebwe:

Feeding the post needs to be schooled, but Kentucky’s players never take a dribble to improve their angle and often look uncomfortable trying to force-feed it.

But it’s not entirely on Tshiebwe’s teammates or his coach. While he’s putting up numbers, he’s not always helping himself, setting bad screens that create bad angles.

If Tshiebwe sets a good screen, Reeves can catch the ball lower on the floor and would have an angle to throw the ball. Instead of catching the ball with an angle on the block, Tshiebwe catches it at the 3-point line and forces a low-percentage shot.

This is what that initial pin-down action should look like:

This is another instance where Kentucky’s guards just don’t have the confidence to make a quick read. Fredrick should throw the pass right away to the bottom left corner of the backboard. When he hesitates and passes to Daimion Collins for the high-low, Michigan State’s Mady Sissoko re-positions himself to take it away. Collins still forces it.

And when the high-low is there, Kentucky doesn’t realize that either. When Wallace looks at Tshiebwe on the play below, he wisely does not throw it because Gonzaga’s Julian Strawther is cheating over. But this shouldn’t end the effort. Toppin should flash to the high post, because he’d have options, either throwing the high-low to Tshiebwe if Strawther starts back toward Fredrick or passing to Fredrick in the corner if Strawther is still cheating:

Could Wallace have made that skip pass? Sure. But Strawther would have more time to recover. These are read-and-react situations that Kentucky fails almost every time. Not everything can be a set play. The best teams adjust based on what the defense is doing, and while it’s early, the Wildcats just don’t appear very well-schooled thus far.

And what’s the point for Kentucky to play another big with Tshiebwe if they can’t even work together?

Toppin is a weapon, who might even be more dangerous in a small-ball lineup where he shifts to the five when Tshiebwe goes to the bench. Toppin is at least playable at the four because he can make plays on the perimeter, but Collins looks out of place there — he should be a rim-rolling backup five. Calipari would probably be best off splitting backup center minutes between Toppin and whoever is best between Collins and Ware. He also would be smart to reevaluate the role of 6-foot-6 freshman Chris Livingston. Livingston is also playing out of position. He’s a college four, who Calipari has placed on the wing.

Not only is Livingston’s production non-existent in UK’s first two marquee games — one point in a combined 20 minutes against Michigan State and Gonzaga — he’s also struggling to figure out where he should be.

This is what that looks like:

Toppin is telling Livingston to clear out right away. Instead of exiting to the opposite corner, he hangs out in the right shorter corner. Tshiebwe has his man on the top side, in the perfect spot for Toppin to feed him, but he can’t because Livingston is in the way.

Another contested jumper.

“We missed every shot,” Calipari said Sunday, noting that the Wildcats only had 11 turnovers.

But those shots were rarely any good, and it’s hard to turn the ball over when your players do not move it and take the first shot available.

Is dribble drive the answer?

Kentucky scored 47 points in the second half on Sunday, and Calipari credited it to a change he made at halftime: abandoning most of his sets and going to the dribble-drive motion.

What it did was allow the Wildcats to play with more tempo, not stopping to look toward the sideline to see what to run, and they played more instinctual basketball.

It helped that Gonzaga had a lot of early defensive breakdowns, guarding simple handoff actions poorly. Remember, this is a Gonzaga defense that just allowed 94 points to Texas and has its own defensive issues. Toppin catching fire from the mid-range was also a plus, but banking on him to shoot like that from the mid-range is not sustainable. Those are shots most defenses will live with. Kentucky’s ball movement was hardly better, but it was an improvement.

The best version of the Wildcats so far has been when their guards are attacking. It doesn’t have to be all dribble drive; simple ball-screen actions can work as well, especially for Wheeler. He is capable of picking apart a defense when a pick-and-roll is executed with proper spacing.

If the defense tags the roller, he’ll skip it to the shooter.

Wheeler and Fredrick have the highest basketball IQs on Kentucky and exhibit some actual patience. Kentucky rarely puts much pressure on the defense beyond the first action. But watch what happens when Wheeler rejects the screen and then puts the defense in scramble mode with a kick out to Fredrick:

Multiple passes! Multiple paint touches! That’s good basketball.

Any actions that help Wheeler get a paint touch and forces help is likely to lead to good shots for Kentucky:

Wallace is not as advanced as a decision-maker, but he is aggressive off ball screens.

Both of those plays work because the defender on the help side is defending a shooter. In the second clip, notice that Reeves lifts. Had Wallace been cut off, he put his defender (Bolton) in no-man’s land, trying to decide whether to help against the roller (Ware) or recover to Reeves on the wing. Credit to Ware for rolling hard. While he’s not much of a threat offensively, he does roll hard. This is a spot where a more athletic Collins could conceivably thrive.

Actual movement away from the play is a rarity for Kentucky, but it’s necessary to occupy the attention of the help.

Too often Kentucky’s perimeter players have cement in their shoes. When they do, they’re easy to guard:

The dribble drive is not going to work when it looks like this.

But watch what happens at the top of the screen in this clip below as Fredrick and Toppin interchange spots. Because the help defenders trade places, Stawther is a step or two wider than Watson was, and that tiny bit of space gives Tshiebwe enough room to execute his move.

These are simple concepts that simply need to be drilled.

Fredrick has just eight points in the two losses so far, but one reason he’s not scoring is he’s not being put in positions to score. He thrived at Iowa playing around big man Luka Garza. Most of his 3s, which he shot at a 46.6 percent clip, came off spot-ups. Kentucky didn’t create many of those looks against Gonzaga, but with proper spacing and multiple paint touches, they’ll be there.

And then the Cats can also mix in an occasional set play like this to get him open:

That was one of the few times the Cats executed in that first half. Sometimes those shots don’t go in, but you get enough of them and Fredrick will make a good share.

It’s on Calipari to put in a system that puts his guys in position to succeed. Shooting and playmaking around Tshiebwe should be a priority.

Because even good action can get screwed up if the wrong guy is set up. Here’s Collins again treated like a perimeter player:

It’s possible Collins was supposed to exit from the slot to the opposite side of the floor instead of circling back around, but if this were the play, it wouldn’t be a bad one if it’s a player who can shoot or drive catching it where he did. Instead, it’s setting Collins up to fail. He has been a turnover machine when he gets touches on the perimeter.

Kentucky’s issues are not entirely offensive. Late-season struggles last year and the early exit in the NCAA Tournament against Saint Peter’s was more on the defense, and the defense has not been great in either of the first two losses. But those issues are easier to fix in the short term. In the long term, Calipari may need to reimagine his offense and lineup construction. It’s all fixable, but it’s not simply a shooting problem. Kentucky needs to run better action and learn how to execute, read and react.

“It’s a long season,” Calipari said. “It’s November.”

He has time to get it right, but these same issues could pop up in March without a few philosophical tweaks.

(Top photo of John Calipari: Young Kwak / AP)

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