Don't be too concerned about Kentucky's 3-point shooting this season

The excitement around next year’s Kentucky basketball roster is growing like a weed. You know, the good kind of weed that penetrates every part of your garden and is nearly impossible to remove. Alright, maybe that is not the best analogy, but pick your favorite uncontrollable growth metaphor and apply it to Big Blue Nation’s giddiness for the players coming to Lexington this season. The only true weed in the roster’s makeup is the team’s perceived lack of 3-point shooting. However, weariness around this topic may not be completely warranted.

Kentucky fans have been spoiled with elite 3-point shooters as of late. Between Reed Sheppard, Rob Dillingham, Antonio Reeves, and Koby Brea, Kentucky has seen four of the school’s top 15 shooters in school history in the last two seasons. Just because the 2025-26 roster doesn’t include one of the best shooters on the planet, it does not mean we should sound the alarm.

Of course, the numbers are what they are, and generally speaking, they have a good history of not lying. If you combine all of the individual players’ 3-point shooting numbers from last season, this year’s Kentucky roster combines for 34 percent from deep.

This year’s Kentucky roster’s 2024-25 3-point shooting

Player	Team	3-Pt Made	3-Pt Attempts	Percentage
Mouhamed Dioubate	Alabama	12	26	46.2%
Kam Williams	Tulane	63	153	41.2%
Jasper Johnson	OTE (HS)	46	124	37.1%
Reece Potter	Miami (OH)	22	60	36.7%
Otega Oweh	Kentucky	27	76	35.5%
Denzel Aberdeen	Florida	36	103	35.0%
Collin Chandler	Kentucky	17	49	34.7%
Trent Noah	Kentucky	12	36	33.3%
Andrija Jelavic	Mega Bemax	25	82	30.5%
Brandon Garrison	Kentucky	12	40	30.0%
Jaland Lowe	Pittsburgh	41	154	26.6%
Malachi Moreno	Great Crossing (HS)	3	12	25.0%
Jayden Quaintance	Arizona State	6	32	18.8%
TOTAL		322	947	34.0%

How do these shooting numbers stack up to the country’s best?

Admittedly, 34 percent shooting as a team is not great. That number would rank 164th in all of college basketball last season. The National Champion Florida Gators, however, shot not too much better at 35.6 percent. This was the lowest of all the Final Four teams (Houston: 39.4 percent, Duke 38.6 percent, and Auburn 35.9 percent).

The three NCAA champs prior to last season all shot a similar clip from deep, with UConn at 35.8 percent in 2024, 36.3 percent in 2023, and Kansas at 36.1 percent in 2022. You have to go back to Baylor in 2021 to find a title-winner with elite 3-point shooting (41.3 percent).

Now let’s make one small tweak to Kentucky’s shooting stats by swapping out Jaland Lowe’s sophomore numbers with his freshman numbers. Much has been made of Lowe’s necessary “hero-ball” on a below-average Pitt team last season, forcing him to take a horde of contested shots. On top of that, his father suggested that he may have been playing last season with a broken finger.

I’ve always been hesitant to completely disregard Lowe’s 26.6 percent shooting. However, if you were to use his freshman season’s 35.2 percent mark instead, Kentucky’s current roster jumps up from 34 percent to 35.4. That is almost identical to Florida’s 3-point shooting percentage last season when they cut down the nets.

Mark Pope says he wants to shoot closer to 30 3-pointers per game this season, but without a historically exceptional marksman, is this the best strategy? I’ll leave that to Pope and his Ivy League brain to figure out, but when these players do shoot, there is a good chance their overall percentage will be good enough to make a deep run in March.