John Fanta is buying Kentucky as a potentially elite 3-point shooting team

Mark Pope‘s offensive system emphasizes shooting as many three-pointers as possible. He proved this to be a fact when Kentucky made more triples during the 2024-25 season (341, which broke the 1992-93 team’s mark by a single bucket) than any other squad in program history.

When The Field of 68 crew came to Lexington earlier this week for their live show from Kentucky’s practice, Pope told them he wants the 2025-26 Wildcats to break the three-point record again. But does he have the personnel to pull it off? Last season’s team featured a pair of impressive, big-minute outside shooters in Koby Brea and Jaxson Robinson, who combined for 155 (45.5 percent) of those 341 makes. Kentucky might not have a Brea-type — someone widely regarded as one of the best shooters in the country — on this season’s roster, but the number of shooters, most of them coming off the bench, could have Kentucky vying to set another record by next March.

John Fanta, a college basketball broadcaster for NBC Sports who also co-hosts a podcast on The Field of 68 titled DTF (which features Fanta, Rob Dauster, and Terrence Oglesby), was asked by Dauster if he’s buying Pope’s vision of Kentucky being a “potentially elite 3-point shooting team” this season. His answer will please the Big Blue Nation.

“100 percent. And that’s because their backcourt is about as deep as any in the country,” Fanta said. “The experience factor here is real between Jaland Lowe and Denzel Aberdeen and Otega Oweh. And Lowe, this is a guy who is gonna facilitate. He’s gonna set these guys up to make shots. But you look at some of the historical numbers of some of these guys, Kam Williams comes in, that’s a guy that shot over 41 percent from three last year. Just as a freshman. But it goes beyond him.

“I think Jasper Johnson, he’s a shot-making guy who will benefit from the people around him. I always say, when you come into a program, who’s around you, that helps set you up for success. So they’ve got facilitators and they’ve got shot-makers. They’re gonna play with pace.”

As discussed on this very website before, Kentucky’s potential starting five on opening day might not be filled with knockdown outside shooters. We should expect Lowe to see his three-point shooting numbers go up, while Aberdeen and Oweh are capable of hitting outside shots (Aberdeen more so than Oweh), but a frontcourt duo of Mo Dioubate and Brandon Garrison won’t exactly be stretching defenses to their limits with their shooting. None of those five is known first for being three-point marksmen.

But as Fanta mentioned, Williams was an established shooter as a true freshman at Tulane before transferring to Kentucky. Johnson’s scouting report starts with his shooting skills. Then you have the likes of Trent Noah, Collin Chandler, and Andrija Jelavić as respectable shooters off the pine who all expect to play real minutes. That’s a lot of options — possibly more than last season, at least on paper without having seen them play a game yet.

Being able to spread out the three-point shooting beyond just a couple of players is a large reason why Fanta is buying what Pope is selling. That, along with the expectation that Pope won’t seriously alter his offensive game plan just because his roster makeup looks different compared to 2024-25.

“How do you become a historically great shooting team?” Fanta asked his co-hosts. “You can’t just have one or two options, and that’s just it, Kentucky has, what? You guys came away with it and said six, seven guys that can all feasibly play a role for this team out on the perimeter. And that means at some point, a defense has to pick their poison.

“But as a coach, you have a system where you’re gonna launch threes. And that’s just it. Kentucky’s gonna play a style, they’re gonna play to what Mark Pope wants them to do, and that is 2025 basketball. Drive and kick. Pass up a good shot for a great shot. And they’re made up of guys that should be able to get cooking quickly.”

Kentucky’s three-point shooting has been a hot-button topic in the offseason. We won’t know for sure until we see it with our own two eyes, but it certainly doesn’t feel like this group of Wildcats will be lacking the ability to knock down shots.