BTI's Rants and Ramblings: Balanced Scoring Could Be This Team's Strength

When a team sits at 3-6 on the season, you have to try and figure out what the positives are for that team and just hope those positives overtake the negatives that are clearly present too.  This team struggles to shoot the ball consistently, turns it over far too much (sans Vandy), has defensive breakdowns off the dribble, and offensive stagnation for large chunks of games.  But what does this team do well?

I would argue one thing this team has going for it is BALANCE.  While outside of Davion Mintz, there has been wild inconsistencies with the remainder of the roster, in some ways that can be a strength too.  Because I imagine opposing coaches have to really plan for a lot of different options from UK and with uncertainty on who is going to show up or not.  Through 9 games this year, we’ve already had 5 players lead the team in scoring:

Boston: 3 (Morehead, Richmond, Kansas)
Mintz: 3 (Kansas, North Carolina, Louisville)
Sarr: 2 (Notre Dame, Vanderbilt)
Clarke: 1 (Georgia Tech
Allen: 1 (Mississippi State)

With the emergence of Dontaie Allen and the return of Keion Brooks, there are a lot of good options for guys to lead the team on the offensive end of the floor.  Oliver Sarr doesn’t show up?  Get the ball to Allen.  Allen’s shot isn’t falling?  How about BJ Boston?  Terrence Clark showed against Georgia Tech an ability to get hot.  And I think we’ll see a game where Isaiah Jackson gets a bunch of gimme baskets and leads the team in scoring too.

Now, there is no doubt that we need some stability on the offensive end too.  Not knowing from game to game who can score might be difficult to gameplan against but also is a risky way to try and win basketball games.  Maybe BJ Boston isn’t a star but it would be nice to know that he’s getting 13-15 points every game without needing 18 shots to get there.  It would be nice to know that Sarr is getting 10-15 points a game without foul trouble.  I think from the guard spots, you just need them to combine to be effective.

Balance could be what this team does best.  Is that good enough to win a conference title?  Is it good enough to make the NCAA Tournament or even make a run in that tournament?  I’m not so sure.  But at this point we have to find something this team does well.