Kentucky's shooting breakthrough does not surprise Mark Pope: 'The numbers work themselves out.'

On the year, Kentucky is shooting just 34.9% from three through 18 games, good for No. 134 nationally and No. 8 in the SEC — completely average. Tighten the sample size to only conference play, though, and the Wildcats are actually leading the league in 3-point shooting at 38.7% through five games, knocking down 41 of 106 total attempts. And that’s with a disastrous 4-19 day in Tuscaloosa to get things rolling at Alabama.

They’ve boosted their numbers every time out, starting with that 21% hit rate against the Tide, followed by 38.8% (7-18) vs. Missouri, 40.9% (9-22) vs. Mississippi State, 43.5% at LSU (10-23) and 45.8% (11-24) at Tennessee.

That climb has allowed Mark Pope’s group to not only lead the SEC, but do so by a wide margin. LSU is the closest at 36.7%, followed by Tennessee and Mizzou at 36.0%, Texas at 35.3%, Arkansas and Oklahoma at 34.5% and Vanderbilt at 34.2% to make up the top half of the league.

To the second-year coach’s credit, he called his shot from the very beginning — even when these Wildcats were building brick houses from deep every time out. Coming off one of Kentucky’s worst shooting performances of the year, a 3-15 outing (20%) in a rock-fight win over Indiana, Pope confidently said the breakthrough was coming.

“By the end of the year, I think we’re going to be really dangerous shooting the ball. I do,” he said on December 15, despite the team ranked No. 243 nationally in 3-point percentage at the time. “… I do think that we’re going to have tremendous success shooting the ball. Right now, we’re still not quite in that space yet. (We want to) be an elite-level, explosive scoring team.”

It wasn’t just blind faith in his guys; it was the fact that their practice numbers backed up that hope. Shot-tracking data at the Joe Craft Center told these Wildcats to continue firing away, even if the eye test in games suggested it was time for these guys to let it go and play in the mud — the way they beat Indiana and St. John’s to put a bow on the non-conference schedule. Pope appreciated the way they learned to win when shots weren’t falling, but that didn’t mean they were going to stop taking them.

“I’ve never been on a team where the NOAH numbers don’t actually eventually transport their way into games. I just have never seen that,” he continued. “With that history, I have every expectation that this team, I think, is going to be really dangerous. I think for us, mostly it’s finding some continuity. … We have guys (shooting well) that have not exploded onto the scene in games yet. That’s just a matter of time.”

Well, here we are. In back-to-back-to-back 12-plus-point comeback wins, at least three players have hit multiple 3-pointers — Otega Oweh, Denzel Aberdeen and Kam Williams vs. MSU, Oweh, Aberdeen, Collin Chandler and Andrija Jelavic at LSU and Aberdeen, Chandler and Jasper Johnson at Tennessee. The volume and efficiency are both creeping up, and, magically, the offense is looking closer to the well-oiled machine Pope’s first group was a season ago.

Funny how that works, right?

He’s not a fortune teller and he’s not gonna be able to tell you the winning lottery numbers, but Pope does know math and the law of averages. There wasn’t a secret to any of this outside of trusting the work his players have been putting in behind the scenes. A breakthrough wasn’t guaranteed, necessarily, but highly, highly, highly likely.

Enough to feel pretty darn good about it.

“The numbers work themselves out over time,” he said Monday evening during his weekly radio show. “It doesn’t really help you in any particular specific moment in a particular game, but, listen — we can make the numbers say whatever we want them to say. We can dive so deep into analytics you chase your tail for days, but there are some pure things like that where you just expect that guys that can make shots eventually make shots.

“That’s something we can expect. We’ve seen Kam (Williams) — he’s starting to make shots. AJ (Andrija Jelavic) is starting to make shots. Clearly, Collin (Chandler) and D.A. (Denzel Aberdeen) are shooting the ball really well right now. That’s just something you expect to work out and we have guys that work really hard on it.”

That doesn’t mean repeatedly shoving a square peg in a round hole finally got it through. These Wildcats had to work at it by being intentional about creating good shots for teammates with selflessness, trusting that their opportunities would come as a result of others’ success.

Take Mo Dioubate, for instance — someone who has taken some heat for refusing to pass out of the post, to the point of Nate Oats calling it out after Kentucky’s loss at Alabama. Rather than forcing a contested shot inside, he kicked it out to Oweh for a cleaner pull-up jumper. No. 00 missed, but Dioubate grabbed the offensive rebound and kicked it back out to Aberdeen in the opposite corner, who lost his defender on a pump fake and converted on an easy floater to cut it to three with 3:17 to go.

A few possessions later, Collin Chandler earned a paint touch of his own and got a pair of defenders to swarm, leaving Dioubate uncovered for the eight-footer to cut it to one at the 1:46.

“They’re very into the details of executing shooting,” Pope continued. “We’ve done a much better job, much better job, of earning guys shots. In fact, down the stretch against Tennessee, our earning guys shots was special. The first play down the stretch (from Dioubate) was so important. … We’re actually shooting the ball better because we’re making plays for each other at a higher level.”

Spacing has helped, too — hence the extended run for Williams and Jelavic, especially with Jaland Lowe out for the season and Jayden Quaintance’s status still up in the air. With so many moving parts in terms of personnel, they’ve needed to find consistent production from players deeper in the rotation. That includes backcourt players like Chandler and Johnson stepping up to hit massive shots when their numbers have been called.

The game reps are stacking and chemistry is building.

“We’ve been playing a little bit, some more minutes, a little bit smaller. We’ve changed, revamped again, our spacing vibe on the floor,” Pope added. “With our roster changing, it’s gone through some change in terms of guys we have available and expect to have available. Our guys are also getting more comfortable and trying to understand concepts a little bit more.

“So we’re growing that way. We still have so much work to do, but we’ve gotten better.”

All of those things have led to Kentucky’s perimeter breakthrough — one Pope knew was coming eventually.

Now it’s time to see if the Wildcats can keep it up, refusing to revert to bad habits with unselfish shot creation and subsequent conversions.

“Hopefully that continues,” he said. “If it does, we have a chance to be a really good offensive team.”