Kentucky 'failed miserably' at shooting 30 threes per game last season: "We'd like to remedy that"

Soon after he was hired to coach Kentucky men’s basketball last spring, Mark Pope set a benchmark for his first team in Lexington: shoot at least 30 three-pointers per game.

It was a lofty goal, considering only three programs had done it during the 2023-24 season. But one of those programs was Pope’s BYU squad, which ranked second in the country with 32 three-point attempts per outing. So in that sense, it wasn’t too crazy to believe it could be replicated in his debut season coaching the Wildcats.

It didn’t happen, though. Kentucky finished the 2024-25 season averaging 25.3 three-pointers per contest — a number that still ranked 78th in the country and was coupled by an excellent team-wide shooting clip of 37.5 percent. Taking into account the speed at which Pope had to build his roster in the offseason, combined with injuries up and down the roster for nearly the entire season, 25.3 three-pointers remained an impressive feat.

Going into year two, however, Pope isn’t backing down from the same claim he made this time last offseason.

“You know, I failed miserably at that last year,” Pope said during his Tuesday press conference when asked if he would like his team to shoot 30 threes per game next season. “We’d like to remedy that. It’s really important to us.

“It was just one of the places — I felt like we accomplished a lot last year, but that was one of the spaces that was disappointing. We just… It was hard. Part of it was roster changes made it a little bit more complicated, but that’s an important part of how we play the game. It’s an important part of how the game is played now. And so we’d like to chase that.”

Pope just wrapped up his ninth season as a Division I head coach. His final season at BYU was the only time his teams hit that 30 three-pointers per game threshold. Across four years at Utah Valley, his teams averaged to shoot 23.4 three-pointers per outing. In five seasons at BYU, that number was 25.3.

Can he get his team to boost that number significantly in year two? On paper, next season’s squad isn’t as efficient — from a percentage/volume perspective — at shooting the ball from deep as this past season’s was. In 2024-25, four Kentucky players shot the ball at a 34 percent clip or better (while making at least one three-pointer per game) from beyond the arc. None of them will return next season. Going off last season’s figures, only Tulane transfer Kam Williams can claim to have achieved those marks (and Jasper Johnson if we factor in high school stats) for the 2025-26 edition of the ‘Cats.

That’s not to say Kentucky doesn’t have plenty of capable shooters on the roster, because they certainly do, but Pope addressed other needs in the portal during the offseason that were lacking from last season — chief among them, physicality and athleticism. Jaland Lowe should be a better shooter at UK, Otega Oweh and Collin Chandler should also improve in that area, Denzel Aberdeen showed he can be consistent from deep, and Andrija Jelavic is a perfect floor-spacing big man. There is a world where this is a high-volume, high-efficiency outside shooting unit.

Pope will have the pieces necessary to be a good three-point shooting team in 2025-26. But will this group manage to fire up 30 of them per game while also taking advantage of everything else it excels at? Just five teams shot at least 30 outside looks last season. Only one of them made the NCAA Tournament. It’s a fun goal to set, but if last season is any indication, Pope isn’t going to force his team into taking shots they (or he, to an extent) aren’t fully comfortable with.

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