'Leader' Lowe Ready to Direct UK Offense

During his media day press conference on Monday, Kentucky head coach Mark Pope was asked to briefly describe his new point guard, Jaland Lowe. Pope’s answer came quickly and confidently.

“Cat-quick, leader, competitor,” he said.

Lowe played the previous two seasons at Pittsburgh, where he had an outstanding season last year. Lowe led the Panthers in scoring (16.8 ppg) and assists (169) while playing against Atlantic Coast Conference competition.

With the departure of Lamont Butler, Kentucky needed a point guard and Pope was intrigued by Lowe. One of the knocks on Lowe is his low shooting percentage from last year, but Pope used metrics to explain that away.

“One of the things that really stood out to me is there’s a really useful, functional shot quality metric,” Pope said. “So, what it essentially does is it kind of does a comparison and contrast between every type of shot in the average college basketball player. So, if it’s a pull-up two from the left wing, it will take all of those shots and kind of give you an expected value from the average college basketball player. If it’s a pull-up three in transition, if it’s a post move where a second defender comes, it kind of breaks it down that way. It’s kind of a shot quality metric, and it takes into account a player’s history.”

How did Lowe’s metrics stack up last year?

“One of the interesting things about Jaland was, for whatever reason, last year he was in the 95th, 93rd percentile of players in the country taking shots in the bottom 20% of shot quality numbers,” Pope said. “We love when we see things like that, because those are things that it doesn’t depend on increased skill, it doesn’t depend on hours and hours in the gym. It just relies on a new understanding, a new style of play, maybe a new environment, a new way for J-Lowe to approach the game. We can see quick, huge, massive changes when you see numbers like that.”

Pope knows that a change is possible because he has seen it happen before.

“We got to see a very similar transition from Lamont Butler,” Pope said. “He made huge strides, like almost inconceivable strides last year based on a little bit different but a similar trajectory.”

As for Lowe, he prides himself on being able to score but also to distribute the ball to his teammates. It’s something he has done for years.

“I feel like that’s just the way my game has been molded since I was young,” Lowe said. “Just being able to know how to score and distribute the ball at the same time. That’s just the way I was raised and played growing up.”

As for getting the ball to his teammates, Lowe loves to do that, especially when he has the number of options he does on this year’s team.

“It makes my job 10 times easier,” Lowe said. “When you have guys on this team, as you look all around, it’s just a bunch of guys who are really good at what they’re doing and they take pride in that. Knowing you have guys on your team like that, it definitely makes my job easier.”

Lowe will be the driving force behind the UK offense this season, and from the looks of things, the Cats are in really good hands.