Kentucky currently has a major depth issue that was exposed against Mississippi State

Instead of the normal “top takeaways” post following a game, we’ll just keep it simple with one major takeaway: Kentucky currently has a major depth issue, and Mississippi State exposed it.

Injuries to Dominika Paurová in the offseason and Teonni Key against Missouri have certainly hurt that depth, to be fair. However, Kentucky is now in the same position it was in last season where the bench is practically nonexistent, and that’s disappointing.

The 71-59 Mississippi State loss on Sunday was unfortunate, but the worst part about it is that it just feels like a lot of the issues we saw against the Bulldogs could have potentially been mitigated back in July — back when summer workouts were in full swing. More on that momentarily, though.

To quickly set the record straight, here is what the minutes distribution looked like against Mississippi State:

As you see, Kaelyn Carroll, Lexi Blue and Josie Gilvin combined for just 11 minutes against Mississippi State. All three failed to score. You’ll also notice that all five of Kentucky’s starters played at least 36 minutes, and Jordan Obi probably would have played more if she didn’t foul out.

Kenny Brooks is undoubtably a great evaluator and developer of talent. Georgia Amoore, Clara Strack, Teonni Key and Tonie Morgan are just a selection of the players that he has turned into stars. However, against Mississippi State, we saw that you simply can’t just have a star or two and expect to win. Sometimes, those stars can’t deliver. Sometimes, they’re fatigued (probably from playing 36+ minutes every game). As John Calipari used to always tell us, “they’re not machines”. You have to have pieces that can back those stars up as well.

So, ideally, you would think that Brooks could go to the bench and get something, anything from at least one of his three players on the bench, but that didn’t happen against Mississippi State.

To go back to the point about July, we’ve heard and seen how Brooks and the staff will spend all this time pouring their energy and coaching into players like Amoore, Strack, Key and Morgan, but to simply just pose a question, can the same be said about pieces on down the bench? Does someone like a Josie Gilvin get the same level of developmental focus as a Clara Strack?

That’s a tough question to answer since we’d have to be purely speculative about how Brooks runs practice, but it’s a question worth pondering potentially.

Additionally, as we saw against Mississippi State, Carroll, Blue and Gilvin aren’t really being provided a ton of game reps to truly hone in on their craft either. Of course, as a coach, you have to play your best players (obviously), but it has to be hard to expect much production from spots 6-9 in the rotation if they aren’t really getting sufficient game reps to get them prepared for when their number is called. It doesn’t matter how hard you try, you can’t really simulate game reps in practice. Those actual in-game reps are invaluable for development.

There are little details that can be debated as to why the bench isn’t able to contribute, but the fact of the matter is that when they’re in the game, they aren’t doing anything, especially offensively. That’s a killer.

Sure, some of that falls on those players because it has to click for them, but at the same time, some of the fault should probably fall on Brooks’ shoulders as well. Brooks noted after the Mississippi State game that “we’re not as deep as we would love to be“. That, in part, could have been prevented.

To take a step back from the magnifying glass though, Kentucky is 17-3 (4-2 SEC) — a really good spot to be in, actually. However, not having that lack of production from the bench could have had the Cats in an even better spot to be in.

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