Mark Pope’s major transfer portal mistake is haunting him ahead of Kentucky/Indiana

With a full offseason to build out his roster in Lexington, Mark Pope was expected to assemble a national championship-caliber roster. Well, he forgot one major component, the one that made Kentucky one of the most efficient offenses in the country last season, and that misstep has his team at 6-4. 

The component Pope inexplicably neglected: shooting. Particularly from three-point range. Last season, Kentucky shot the three at a 37.5 percent clip on 25.3 attempts per game. This year, on 27.7 attempts, the Wildcats are down at 32.9 percent, which ranks 195 in Division I. 

While Lamont Butler (39.1%), Jaxson Robinson (37.6%), Koby Brea (43.5%), Andrew Carr (32.5%), and Ansley Almonor (42.4%) walked out the door, Pope welcomed Jaland Lowe, a career 29.5 percent shooter from distance, Denzel Aberdeen (33.5%), and Mouhamed Dioubate (29.2%) as their replacements. To make matters worse, Kam Williams, who shot over 40 percent from deep at Tulane, has struggled to solidify a role in the rotation and is shooting the three at a 19.4 percent clip in his 17.6 minutes a game. 

What Kentucky needed to get this offseason was a knockdown shooter, particularly on the wing. Somebody like 6-foot-6 Sam Houston State transfer Lamar Wilkerson. Kentucky was in the mix for Wilkerson, but lost out to Indiana, which hired Sam Houston State's associate head coach to its staff. Then, four days before Kentucky is set to host the Hoosiers, Wilkerson went off, dropping 44 points on Penn State in 24 minutes while shooting 10-for-15 from beyond the arc. 

Lamar Wilkerson’s record-setting performance for Indiana couldn’t have come at a worse time for Kentucky

Wilkerson came into Tuesday night’s offensive explosion, shooting the ball poorly from the floor over a three-game stretch, which included Indiana’s first two losses of the year. The senior wing went just 5-for-23 from deep between the Bethune Cookman, Minnesota, and Louisville games. 

Had Wilkerson continued to struggle before Kentucky’s matchup with Indiana on Saturday, it would have been easy to forget the Cats’ interest in Wilkerson in the offseason and ignore how glaringly Pope’s offense could use a player just like him. Now, he’ll be coming into Lexington as Indiana’s all-time leader for made threes in a single game, and the team’s leading scorer, averaging 18.8 points to Tucker DeVries’s 17.2. 

Kentucky needed better athletes and impact defenders to advance beyond the Sweet 16, where Pope’s first season at the helm eventually came to an end. However, in search of that, he sacrificed too much shooting and subsequently spacing on the offensive end. Unless this season turns around, which could start with a win over the Hoosiers on Saturday, it’s unlikely he ever makes that mistake again.