Yes, this UK basketball team wants to shoot 35 3-pointers per game. Can they really do it?
The number sounds staggering, and that’s the reason for the knowing grin on Cody Fueger’s face when the subject comes up.
Fueger — the “offensive coordinator” behind new Kentucky coach Mark Pope’s approach to scoring the basketball — has made it clear that he wants this Wildcats’ team to shoot 35 3-pointers per game.
The longtime Pope assistant is serious about that goal. He’s been advertising it ever since his arrival in Lexington, and the look on his face tells you all you need to know about his awareness of how it sounds to the outside world.
It’s ambitious, for sure, perhaps even bordering on basketball lunacy.
That’s been the conventional thinking, at least.
No NCAA Division I team has averaged 35 or more 3-pointers per game since Savannah State put up 38.7 per contest during the 2018-19 season. No team from a major conference has attempted 35 per game since … well … it’s never happened.
The 3-point line was universally adopted in college basketball for the 1986-87 season, and no team from a top league has ever shot that many long balls in the nearly 40 years since.
But there’s no denying the direction that basketball at the highest levels has been heading — out to the perimeter, and beyond — and one need only look at how Pope constructed his first UK roster to know that much of the process took place with the 3-ball in mind.
Last season, Pope and Fueger’s offense at BYU averaged 32.0 3-point attempts per game, second nationally behind North Florida’s 33.2.
To put that in perspective: Kentucky’s final offense under John Calipari — viewed as much more wide-open than previous UK teams and boasting the nation’s No. 1 ranking in 3-point percentage — took just 24.2 attempts per game.
And to put the BYU number in further perspective: Analytics darling Nate Oats, who has become somewhat of a poster child for utilizing the 3-pointer in college basketball and has lifted Alabama to national prominence in the process, has never seen one of his Bama teams average more than 31 3-pointers per game in any of his five seasons there.
