The Kentucky Wildcats are getting set for the regular season finale on Saturday when they take on the #15 Missouri Tigers on the road in Columbia. Missouri has a very high-powered offense, and a lot of their possessions come in transition. They are one of the best teams in college basketball at turning their defense into instant offense.
Mark Pope talked on Thursday to preview the matchup, really going in-depth on just how elite Missouri is in transition. The Tigers have a knack for taking the ball away, so that should be one of the major keys heading into the game for Kentucky.
“Almost 22 percent of their possessions are in transition. They’re a really, really high-level steals team, they’re one of the best steals teams in the country. If you dig deeper than the numbers, their transition is still prolific even if you take out the steals numbers. So, they’re pushing it in transition really hard. They have incredibly capable shooters that are dangerous. They have really dangerous perimeter players. They’ve got a non-traditional starting five, four, who’s unbelievable in iso. He’s coming off more ball-screens than any big in our conference, for sure. He’s really, really effective at it. They have an ability to focus in on some places they want to attack and come back to them over and over again. …There are some similarities to the general sense. We run a lot of the same actions offensively, we kind of value spacing in the same way offensively. …They’re a really good team, and clearly they’ve been terrific offensively.”
Missouri is one of the best examples of turning defense into offense, as they force an average of 14.3 miscues from their oppenent per game, with 9.7 steals per game. Their steal percentage ranks 7th in the country. Offensively, that defense really helps. Not only are they a great transition team in particular, but the Tigers rank 10th in the country in effective field goal percentage. They actually rank first in the SEC shooting from the field, at 48.9%. They are also right with Kentucky in three-point percentage, tied first in the SEC shooting it at 37.3% from deep.
Even though the Tigers have lost three of their last five games, all of those losses were on the road, so they’ll be looking forward to being back in Columbia to finish off the season against the Wildcats. Missouri is 18-1 at home, in fact, and picked up a 110-98 win over Alabama just two weeks ago. A red-hot offense that Kentucky is going to have to be ready for, and they feed off turnovers.
