Kentucky Must Get Back to Playing Through the Big Men After Early SEC Scares

Expectations for Kentucky to go undefeated are quickly flying out the window, and the Wildcats only have themselves to blame.

Despite boasting the biggest and baddest frontcourt in the nation, Kentucky has inexplicably devolved into a three-point-shooting team.

If the Wildcats don't break that habit in a hurry, there's no way they will go undefeated.

They made at least 19 two-point field goals in each of their first 12 wins. They won each of those games by at least 10 points. Willie Cauley-Stein became a fixture in Player of the Year rankings while averaging 17.4 points per 40 minutes.

But in their last three contests—a 58-50 win over archrival Louisville, an 89-86 overtime win against Ole Miss and a 70-64 double-overtime affair on Saturday at Texas A&M—they're averaging only 12.7 successful two-point attempts per game and have an average margin of victory of just 5.7 points. Cauley-Stein has scored just 7.3 points per 40 minutes in those three games.

That correlation is far from coincidental, and as ESPN's Jeff Goodman noted on Twitter after Saturday's game, other SEC players and coaches have noticed that Kentucky is mortal after all:

In recent games prior to Saturday's double-overtime win over Texas A&M, the Wildcats shot quite well from distance. In the four games against North Carolina, UCLA, Louisville and Ole Miss, they hit 36-of-75 (48.0 percent) from beyond the arc.

Most of that was Devin Booker—the freshman sniper absurdly made 12 of his 14 attempts—but Aaron Harrison was finally hitting shots, too. Through 10 games, Harrison was just 10-of-44 (22.7 percent) from three-point range, but he made 13-of-31 (41.9 percent) in those four games.

The Wildcats fell madly in love with the most volatile offensive weapon in basketball and it would have led to their doom if Texas A&M hadn't been so woefully incapable of making any shots of its own.

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When Ole Miss gave Kentucky a scare, we chalked it up to an outstanding effort from the Rebels. They played their "A" game while Kentucky put forth a "B-" at best. But Saturday was a case of an average team playing a below-average game and still nearly beating the best team in the country.

In the several months we spent searching for the team that could possibly knock off Kentucky, no one could have guessed the Aggies would push the Wildcats to double overtime despite shooting 33.3 percent from the field, 13.3 percent from three-point range and 53.3 percent from the free-throw line.

How in the world does that happen? When Texas-Arlington put up shooting numbers like those, Kentucky won the game by 48 points!

The big difference, though, is Kentucky was 22-of-35 from inside the arc against the Mavericks and only 9-of-36 against the Aggies.

Both Texas A&M and Ole Miss sat back in a zone and dared Kentucky to be a jump-shooting team. Harrison couldn't have been more eager to oblige, attempting 22 three-pointers between the two games.

On Saturday, Harrison attempted more shots (20) than Kentucky's entire five-man frontcourt combined (18).

That might not sound like a horrible strategy if you prefer to remember Harrison as the three-point assassin from the 2014 NCAA tournament, but here's a rarely mentioned secret: Harrison is the least valuable scorer in Kentucky's nine-man rotation, and it's not even close.

Don't believe me? Take a look at this chart of points per field-goal attempt—and note this doesn't even include the 20 attempts it took him to score 12 points on Saturday.

Player	Points	FGA	Points/Attempt
Dakari Johnson	116	63	1.84
Devin Booker	132	91	1.45
Willie Cauley-Stein	138	97	1.42
Karl-Anthony Towns	118	83	1.42
Marcus Lee	42	32	1.31
Tyler Ulis	66	52	1.27
Trey Lyles	111	88	1.26
Andrew Harrison	107	86	1.24
Aaron Harrison	160	149	1.07

Harrison may have the intestinal fortitude to hit some daggers on the biggest stage, but how is it even possible he entered Saturday with at least 52 more field-goal attempts than every other player on the roster when every shot he attempts is worth much less than an attempt by anyone else?

Equating this situation to a different sport, Harrison is the closer in baseball who gets save chance after save chance while owning a significantly higher ERA than any other reliever on the roster.

We're not here to argue Harrison should stop shooting altogether, but this team will remain susceptible to scares and upsets as long as he continues taking 30.5 percent of the shots while he is on the floor, according to KenPom.com (subscription required).

Even though SEC opponents have been playing zone defense against the Wildcats, there's absolutely no excuse for the most talented team in the country to struggle to get opportunities and points in the paint.

Look, if Louisiana Tech can shoot 19-of-36 from two-point range against Syracuse's legendary 2-3 zone, Kentucky should be able to figure out how to have big men flash to the elbows, set down screens and generally run an offense rather than pointlessly passing the ball around the perimeter before taking a low-percentage shot.

As Rob Dauster of NBCSports.com pointed out in frustration on Twitter, the Wildcats didn't exactly do that on Saturday:

Here's a startling observation for a team that was good for what felt like half a dozen alley-oop dunks per game earlier in the season: Aaron Harrison was the only Kentucky player to officially attempt a dunk on Saturday, and all three his attempts were unassisted and came immediately after steals.

Even if nothing else is working, the Wildcats should be annihilating zone defenses by going over the top for alley-oops over and over again. They don't need to be "Dunk City" all of the time, but that's the weapon they should be using rather than 22-foot jumpers.

But alas, 38.7 percent of their field-goal attempts in SEC play have come from three-point range, even though that ratio was just 29.2 percent in nonconference play.

Kentucky's three-point rate in conference games is higher than the one Notre Dame has for the season. The Fighting Irish have attempted 38.6 percent of their field goals from three-point range, but they employ a four-guard lineup and are shooting 40.7 percent from downtown as a team.

Long story short, Kentucky desperately needs to work on feeding its big men before they starve. It's been nearly a full month since a Wildcat taller than 6'6" scored more than 11 points in a game, even though every single one of them is capable of dropping 20 on any given night.

A home game against Missouri on Tuesday could be exactly what the doctor ordered. In a losing effort, the Tigers allowed Auburn's Cinmeon Bowers to score 20 points and grab 14 rebounds on Saturday.

There's truly no time like the present for Cauley-Stein and Towns to reignite their Player of the Year campaigns while putting Kentucky back on track as the hands-down best team in the country.

Kerry Miller covers college basketball for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter @kerrancejames.