Everyone go find a stick and the closest dead horse. We have some beating to do when it comes to critiquing Kentucky\u2019s shot selection from the 2022-23 season. <\/p>\n
If you are the type to move on quickly from a painful chapter and are already fully invested in the hype of next year\u2019s team, especially following the show the new recruits put on at the McDonald\u2019s All-American Game<\/a>, then, by all means, exit now and keep your optimism high. However, if you\u2019re like me and still feel the need to wallow in the coulda-woulda-shoulda past for an unnecessarily long time, then follow me down this dimly-lit path of Kentucky basketball shot chart analytics.<\/p>\n First, a major caveat: Kentucky finished 17th in Kenpom\u2019s<\/a> Adjusted Offensive Efficiency category, so if you\u2019re in the camp of \u201cLong 2s can still win ballgames,\u201d then grab onto that ranking and hold on it with the strength of Oscar Tshiebwe<\/a><\/strong> grabbing a rebound. Kentucky ranked second in this category in the SEC behind Missouri and ahead of league champ, Alabama, which embraces the modern basketball mindset of maximizing field goal attempts at the rim and from behind the arc as much as anyone in college basketball.<\/p>\n Of course, it is certainly possible to win the way Kentucky plays. John Calipari has done it so much in the past, the basketball overlords put him in the Hall of Fame. The fact is, however, the game has changed, and coaches now lean heavily into freshly-available statistical probability rather than embracing the playbooks of old.<\/p>\n Why not follow the numbers and give yourself the best statistical advantage you can? This won\u2019t come as a shock, but Kentucky did not exactly do that this year.<\/p>\n Thanks to CBBAnalytics.com<\/a> for their advanced charts; let\u2019s dive in.<\/p>\n This chart depicts Kentucky\u2019s shot selection this season. Starting with the inner circle and working outwards, the zones correlate to shots at the rim, 4 to 10 feet, 10 to 15 feet, 2s greater than 15 feet, 3s shorter than 25 feet, and 3s between 25 and 30 feet. The percentages indicate the number of shots taken from each zone compared to all of Kentucky\u2019s field goal attempts.<\/p>\n The darker the red, the further above<\/em> the D1 average. The darker the blue, the further below<\/em> the D1 average.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n For what it\u2019s worth, Kentucky shot four 3s further than 30 feet that are not represented here, which is why the percentage totals add up to 99.7%. They missed them all.<\/p>\n If modern basketball maximizes layups and 3s, a quick glance at this chart tells you Kentucky does the complete opposite of that. The only shot distances where Kentucky shows up blue (below D1 average in the percentage of their shots taken from these areas) are at the rim and behind the arc.<\/p>\n Worse yet, they are borderline Cardinal-red in the 2-pointers-longer-than-15-foot zone, and everyone would agree that is an ugly shade of red. <\/p>\n The average D1 team only shot 7.1% of their shots from this range meaning Kentucky was nearly double that at 13.8%. Similarly, Kentucky is 3% higher than the D1 average on shots between 10 and 15 feet.<\/p>\n And if I could pick another big blue nit from this chart, notice now Kentucky shot nearly half of their 3s from further than 25 feet. The college 3-point line is at 22 feet 1 3\u20444 inch. Antonio Reeves can make it rain from anywhere but why not shoot a step closer to the line? Those go in more often.<\/p>\n According to KenPom, the five most efficient offenses in college basketball are Gonzaga, Baylor, Iowa, UConn, and Miami. Two of those teams are in the Final Four.<\/p>\n When you compare their shot charts to Kentucky\u2019s, it doesn\u2019t take long to see the difference. 24.6% of Kentucky\u2019s total shots were 2-pointers further 10 feet away. Amongst the most efficient teams in college basketball, the only team remotely close to that number is Miami at 17.1%. <\/p>\n UConn, the odds-on favorite to win the title, shoots just 9.5% of their shots in this zone while the other three teams range between 13% and 16%. <\/p>\n Remarkably, 53.8% of Gonzaga\u2019s shots came within 10 feet; call it the Drew Timme effect. On the other hand, Baylor is the only team in the top 5 to shoot fewer of their shots within 10 feet than Kentucky, as they do most of their damage from long range.<\/p>\n It is no surprise UConn\u2019s major focus on offense is to get close looks and put up 3s. 48.7% of UConn\u2019s shots come down low while 41.8% of their attempts are from deep. That means over 90% of their shots are either 3s or from within 10 feet.<\/p>\n It is the type of shot chart analytics nerds drool over.<\/p>\n Okay, Kentucky shot a lot of long 2s this year, but did they make them? Sort of. Not really.<\/p>\n When it came to the longest of 2s, those greater than 15 feet, Kentucky shot 38.9%. This was actually slightly above the D1 average of 36.6% when it comes to raw shooting percentage. For shots between 10 and 15 feet, they shot 35.9%, slightly lower than the D1 average of 36.3%.<\/p>\n The real story, though, comes when you look at the team\u2019s effective field goal percentage (eFG%), which takes into account that 3s are worth 50% more than 2s.<\/p>\n This chart is a rare case when blue is bad and red is good.<\/p>\n When it comes to eFG%, Kentucky shot more than 10 percentage points worse than the D1 average from 2-point range everywhere besides at the rim.<\/p>\n Respect, Oscar.<\/p>\n To say the implied part verbatim, Kentucky shot better than most teams in the two areas on the floor where they shot far fewer attempts. <\/p>\n Ugh.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n I\u2019ll be the first to admit I did not exactly breeze through my statistics class at the University of Kentucky. Terms like eFG% can sound a little abstract for the vast majority of humans who primarily use calculators for figuring out the proper tip amount to leave their waiter.<\/p>\n To simplify it all, the numbers really stand out when you convert these effective field goal percentages to points per shot attempt. This is how many points on the scoreboard go up every time Kentucky takes a shot from this range:<\/p>\n Within 10 feet: 1.13 points per attempt<\/strong>2-pointers further than 10 feet: 0.75 points per attempt<\/strong>3-pointers (any distance): 1.04 points per attempt<\/strong><\/p>\n On any given play, the midrange jumper may be the best option. It may be all the defense gives you. That happens and you have to take the best shot available to you on any given possession. Similarly, in any given game, sometimes 3-pointers just don\u2019t fall. It is frustrating but look no further than Kentucky\u2019s last game as proof that it happens.<\/p>\n However, in the long run, when you extrapolate everything over the course of a season, teams put more points on the scoreboard by taking 3s and high-percentage looks close to the rim. That\u2019s just the math.<\/p>\n Who was responsible for so many of these long 2s? Pretty much everyone, to be honest. Some players were more apt to shoot the deep 2 than others, but no one\u2019s shot chart looks ideal in the world of modern basketball analytics.<\/p>\n These charts stay in the very telling eFG% category and show far and away the most efficient shot for Kentucky this season was Wallace, Tshiebwe, Toppin, or Livingston at the rim, or Reeves from 3. When Wallace wasn\u2019t shooting them from too deep, his 3-pointer was also a proficient way for the \u2018Cats to score.<\/p>\n Sahvir Wheeler\u2019s 3s look good as well, though his sample size is relatively smaller for obvious reasons.<\/p>\n Surprisingly, CJ Fredrick\u2019s shot chart breaks conventional wisdom, as he shot poorly from 3 (especially considering his reputation coming from Iowa), but he was also the only rotation player to shoot a better eFG% than the D1 average from the dreaded long-2 zone, albeit on only 16 shots.<\/p>\n Kevin Durant once debated<\/a> an analytics guy on Twitter who was trashing the midrange jumper, claiming he has had a ton of success mastering the art of the midrange. He\u2019s right. Over the last 25 NBA seasons, only thrice out of over 1700 times has a player who shot at least 250 midrange shots made 55% or more of them. And it was Kevin Durant all three times.<\/p>\n Among other data points, the analytics guy responded, \u201cYou get to shoot wherever you want! You\u2019re Kevin Durant!\u201d<\/p>\n So barring one of the greatest players ever to play the game suiting up for Kentucky basketball (who knows, KD changes teams regularly), these rules generally apply to most college players.<\/p>\n That being said, all of this is much easier to blog about than execute on the court. Oscar Tshiebwe understandably lived in the paint this season, causing other players to often find a clogged lane when driving to the basket. Moreover, Antonio Reeves proved to be the team\u2019s only reliable shooter from distance. So, perhaps this particular Kentucky squad wasn\u2019t built for a modern basketball philosophy full of layups and 3s.<\/p>\n But it would be nice to at least see them try. <\/p>\n Kentucky can still win by playing the style of basketball that made John Calipari famous. Next season may be a great example of that. But numbers don\u2019t lie. Numbers don\u2019t play favorites. And numbers won\u2019t ever say, \u201cI haven\u2019t seen him.\u201d<\/p>\n As much success as Kentucky basketball has had historically, a shift toward the gravity of analytics may be the best way to keep the \u2018Cats from continuing to fall short.<\/p>\n The post Breaking down Kentucky basketball\u2019s 2022-2023 shot chart<\/a> appeared first on On3<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Everyone go find a stick and the closest dead horse. We have some beating to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1642\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Kentucky\u2019s shot chart<\/h2>\n
Top 5 most efficient offenses\u2019 shot charts<\/h2>\n
Kentucky\u2019s effective field goal percentage chart<\/h2>\n
Points per attempt<\/h2>\n
Player shot charts<\/h2>\n
Should Kentucky evolve its playing style?<\/h2>\n