Kentucky’s newly finalized backcourt trio has potential but also a midrange problem

They are overwhelmingly reliant on putting the ball on the floor and pulling up in the midrange, rather than spotting up for analytically friendly catch-and-shoot 3s where a teammate touches the paint and kicks it back out.

The Mark Pope paradox

This heavy reliance on the dribble jumper is okay with me, as long as you make it. But you have to make it. You can’t shoot 17 and make only 9. It has to be a highly efficient shot, or it becomes a problem.

Mark Pope is a coach who absolutely harps on analytics. Just two years ago, Pope openly stated that his goal was to shoot more than 30 3-pointers a night. To put this current roster’s shot selection into perspective: Pope’s final roster at BYU took only slightly more dribble jumpers as an entire team than Kentucky’s new guard trio combined for by themselves.

So, can it work?

Can the system adapt?

This leaves Kentucky with a fascinating offensive dilemma heading into next season.

Maybe this trio is simply that good at the forgotten art of midrange shooting. Maybe Diallo, Wilkins, and Morton will make SEC defenses pay for dropping back and giving them space at the free-throw line. But asking a team to consistently win basketball games in 2026 by shooting long twos is incredibly difficult.

The alternative is that Pope completely rewires their basketball DNA during summer workouts, forcing them to eliminate the dribble pull-ups and hunt for catch-and-shoot opportunities.

But neither course of action is guaranteed to work. It can work, though, and if the team buys in (which last year’s team struggled to do), it may work brilliantly. But it could just as easily crash and burn. For Pope’s sake, he better hope this team is more like year 1 and less like year 2.