Kentucky Basketball: 3 reasons why the Wildcats will win the SEC and 3 reasons they won’t

Why Kentucky will win the SEC

Kentucky will begin SEC play on January 6, on the road against Florida and perhaps the biggest matchup of conference play will come a month later on February, 3 against Tennessee. Alabama was the SEC champ in the regular season and the tournament last year, but the Vols are the favorites to win the conference this time around.

There’s a lot of time to develop before February 3, but Kentucky will need to do a lot of winning between now and then. So, the Wildcats will need to lean on their strengths early in conference play. These are the three biggest ones for John Calipari’s team and could be the reasons why this team is in the best spot of any to win the SEC.

1. Young guards

When Kentucky took on Kansas in the second game of the season, the Wildcats did not have any of their centers. 6-foot-9 Tre Mitchell was forced to play the five with Aaron Bradshaw, Zvonimir Ivisic, and Ugonna Oyenso out. Bradshaw has since returned, but this is still a guard-heavy team and a lot of the key decision-makers on this team are young.

Last time out against Penn, Calipari started freshman D.J. Wagner next to senior Antonio Reeves in the backcourt but played freshmen guards Reed Sheppard and Rob Dillingham for 27 and 22 minutes respectively. With Wagner playing 30 minutes, that’s 79 minutes to freshman guards, not to mention 14 minutes from Justin Edwards, UK’s five-star freshman wing.

It’s the young guards that dictate how this team plays, and that means they play fast. Kentucky is 31st in the country in possessions per game and 35th in Kenpom‘s adjusted tempo rating. Kentucky is 30th in steals per game and 10th in turnover differential because of the activity of the young guards, particularly Sheppard.

Sheppard was nearly the afterthought of the recruiting class, but he might be the team’s best player, averaging 3.0 steals and only 1.3 turnovers per game.

Even the more erratic Dillingham is leading the team with 4.8 assists and only commits 1.8 turnovers. The excellent turnover differential from a group of guards mature beyond their years, allows this athletic team to get out in transition and get constant easy buckets.

2. Three-point shooting

The other piece to this team’s offensive success is the three-point shooting. It works in tandem with the pace of play, generating three-point shots in transition, but the ridiculous shot-making ability from players like Reeves and Dillingham in half-court possessions is why Kentucky is eighth in the country in offensive efficiency.

Kentucky is shooting 41.4% from three, fourth in the country behind Wyoming, Baylor, and Miami. Dillingham is hitting a staggering 51.4% of his 4.1 three-point attempts per game, while Sheppard is making 59% of his 4.3 attempts from behind the arc.

Shotmaking like that from Dillingham will get Kentucky through the slog of SEC play against great teams. Tennessee especially will want to drag the young Wildcats down into the depths of hell where Rick Barnes’ teams thrive. Shots like that, are how you survive down there, by bailing your team out of bad possessions late in the shot clock.

There is no way that Dillingham and Sheppard will continue to shoot over 50% from deep, but as that regresses, Justin Edwards and D.J. Wagner will start to improve from 25.9% and 26.7% beyond the arc.

We have mounting evidence that this will be the best shooting team in the SEC. Any team that hits around 40% from three and attempts 25.8 of them a game will have great results across a long season but will be even more terrifying in tournament play.

3. Aaron Bradshaw

The one thing that Kentucky was missing from the first iteration of this 2023-24 team was a true big man. I think a 7-foot-1 freshman is plenty big enough. With Bradshaw returning from injury, Kentucky finally has a true center and can move Tre Mitchell to forward.

Bradshaw had his breakout performance against Penn with 17 points and 11 rebounds in 29 minutes off the bench. How that will translate against SEC competition remains to be seen, but the talent is evident.

Surrounding an athletic rim-running big like Bradshaw with attacking ball-handlers and elite shooting is exactly how Alabama won the SEC with Noah Clowney last season, but Bradshaw is even bigger than Clowney and still can hit outside shots.

He’ll give an element of rim protection that the Wildcats desperately need. All the young guards have been great on the offensive end, but we haven’t quite seen that talent translate on defense yet. Bradshaw is like an eraser for the issues on the perimeter.

Kentucky is already 52nd in defensive rebounding rate at 76.8%, but Bradshaw will improve on that and will help the team get out and run in transition even more. Typically you think of small-ball lineups playing the fastest, but Kentucky could get even more pace with Bradshaw on the floor.