Kentucky basketball’s pick-and-roll defense hit bottom at Alabama. Is it any better now?

In a Kentucky men’s basketball season that has been filled with high marks and low moments, one constant since the start of SEC play has been concern for UK’s pick-and-roll defense.

Few games in modern Kentucky basketball history reached the nadir of Jan. 7 in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, when the Alabama Crimson Tide waxed UK by 26 points and rendered the reigning national player of the year unplayable.

Alabama toasted Kentucky’s pick-and-roll defense so badly that Oscar Tshiebwe was benched, and played only 22 minutes while being targeted with lobs tossed over his head.

The nine games since have continued to reflect the inconsistent and volatile nature of this Kentucky season: A home loss to lowly South Carolina followed by a stirring road win at Tennessee, pedestrian wins over the likes of Georgia and Vanderbilt followed by a deflating home loss to Kansas and Tuesday night’s home-court capitulation against Arkansas.

Throughout the last month, those connected to the Wildcats have kept one eye trained on Kentucky’s pick-and-roll defense, searching for signs of improvement.

Kentucky basketball’s pick-and-roll defense was a disaster against Alabama, during one of the worst losses in the John Calipari coaching era.

Has it gotten better since?

Wildcats say defensive communication has improved

If you ask those around the Kentucky program, the answer is yes.

The home loss to South Carolina aside, Kentucky’s coaches will mention improved communication and discipline as reasons why they feel the pick-and-roll defense has improved.

Kentucky is 6-3 since the Alabama game, and while that record still falls short of preseason expectations placed on the Wildcats, those central to the pick-and-roll defense have said increased trust between teammates has developed during this stretch of games.

“We understood (after Alabama) that it’s not just the guys at the ball screen, but guys off the ball who have to tag the roller and understand that you have to get back and close out to the three,” senior forward Jacob Toppin said after Saturday’s home win over Florida. “So it’s a team effort. We’ve gotten a lot better at it and it’s about trust and we’re trusting each other more, so it’s definitely helping us.”

Tshiebwe — the player most associated with getting cooked in Kentucky’s pick-and-roll defense — has pointed to games during the recent nine-game stretch when UK kept opponents in check when defending pick-and-roll sets.

Specifically, when speaking to the media last Friday afternoon, Tshiebwe referenced Kentucky’s win at Ole Miss and the success the Cats had limiting alley-oops and communicating better.

Kentucky has brought its front-court players up more on ball screens in recent weeks, but associate coach Orlando Antigua said Monday that the “point of focus” for pick-and-roll defense involves both the big man and the guard getting screened.

“Both of those guys have really improved in terms of where we want to be at in our pickup points,” Antigua said. “Fighting over it (the ball screen), communicating and sticking to our schemes and what we want to try to do when we’re attacking the pick and rolls.”

In the final words of his answer, Antigua said he felt Kentucky’s pick-and-roll defense had improved over the last month, but that it was still a work in progress.

What happened vs. Arkansas?

It’s a good thing Antigua added that qualifier.

On Tuesday night, Arkansas enjoyed plenty of success running pick-and-roll offense as the Razorbacks claimed a 15-point win at Rupp Arena.

Despite UK’s improvements leading up to the game, the Razorbacks saw nothing on film that deterred them from targeting this weak link.

“We came into the game wanting to attack the pick and roll,” Arkansas junior guard Davonte Davis said. “We knew that their coverages weren’t that good. Just knowing that Oscar (Tshiebwe) wasn’t up to par on the pick-and-roll, so we knew that we wanted to just continue to just attack the goal and feed the bigs running down to the paint.”

Arkansas set the world on fire with its shooting performance Tuesday: 63% from the field for the game, and a whopping 72% in the second half.

The Razorbacks’ mentality was identical to that of South Carolina from the game immediately following the Alabama debacle.

“I wanted to try to get into the ball screens. ... It appeared in the last game that there was a little indecision on what they wanted to do on the ball screens,” South Carolina head coach Lamont Paris said last month, after the Gamecocks’ three-point win in Lexington.

“We probably ran more (ball screens) than what we normally do. But I also wanted to have Tshiebwe have to move and make decisions, and if they were going to switch this or if they were going to go under this or what they were going to do, so I thought the ball screens and attacking the rim was a big part of what we wanted to do.”

Kansas head coach Bill Self estimated his team scored around 20 points from ball-screen sets during the Jayhawks’ win at Rupp Arena in late January.

“I’ll be candid, we hoped to attack them in the pick and roll,” Self said. “I don’t know how many points we scored off of ball screens, but it had to be close to 20 tonight.”

There have been some fundamental changes to the way UK has defended ball screens since the Alabama game.

The tagging, as Toppin mentioned, has gotten better.

Rewatch games and you’ll see Toppin making a concerted, physical effort to crash into the roller to cut off his lane to the rim.

Tshiebwe has also improved some at drop coverage.

With that said, in Kentucky’s three losses over the last month, opponents have averaged nearly 55% shooting on two-pointers (all coming at Rupp Arena) and the majority of UK’s wins in this stretch have come against non-NCAA Tournament teams.

Has Kentucky’s pick-and-roll defense gotten better since the Alabama game? Yes.

Has this improvement come against largely inferior opposition, and have the better opponents during this stretch found ways to expose Kentucky’s defensive issues? Also yes.

And much like the entirety of the Kentucky season to date, both the eye test and the statistics say the Wildcats haven’t consistently been good enough.

Saturday

Kentucky at Georgia

When: Noon

TV: ESPN

Radio: WLAP-AM 630, WBUL-FM 98.1

Records: Kentucky 16-8 (7-4 SEC), Georgia 14-10 (4-7)

Series: Kentucky leads 131-27

Last meeting: Kentucky won 85-71 on Jan. 17 in Lexington

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