Mark Pope explains impact losing point guard Jaland Lowe had on Kentucky, teammates

Kentucky didn’t play with a true point guard for the final two months of the season after Jaland Lowe missed nearly the entire season with a nagging shoulder injury. He eventually had surgery after appearing in nine games for Mark Pope’s Wildcats.

While Pope’s squad played the majority of the season without Lowe’s services, it took a while for the Wildcats to figure out its identity offensively. The Kentucky headman explained how losing his primary ball-handler affected the Wildcats all season long, especially after Pope designed the offense in Lowe’s image.

“J Lowe is a left handed point guard, so we made a cautious decision last spring when we secured his services, that we were going to change the orientation of everything that we did on the court to serve a left handed point guard,” Pope explained. “You might say, why does that matter? With a bunch of things. One, it actually suits a right handed big extremely well in a lot of ways.

“Point guards and bigs work together a lot in a general pick and roll. If you have a point guard that comes off the ball screen to his left, you get to have a big man that’s rolling to his right. It’s way more effective than what you traditionally have, which is trying to serve a right handed point guard. … You get both guys working their strong hand.”

The only issue is that Lowe, as well as projected first-round pick Jayden Quaintance, missed most of the season with injuries. Quaintance, a big man, is still recovering from his ACL injury suffered the season before arriving in Lexington.

“We got all the way to the blue, white scrimmage. We lose J Lowe, but we said, ‘Hey, we’re going to keep it this way, because we’re going to get them (Lowe and Quaintance) back.’ And we did get them back,” Pope said.

“By the time we got through St. John’s to January, he finally decided to have surgery. We’re like, ‘Man, we’re so deep in right now it’s going to be really hard to change everything we have.’ That was one of the complications. Losing J Lowe affected so many guys on our team.”

Lowe played nine games with two starts for UK this past season — and was injured the whole time. His shoulder issues can be traced back to the team’s preseason scrimmage showcase.

He was re-injured during UK’s game vs. St. John’s but returned and ended up playing 17 minutes in the second half. The Wildcats went on to defeat the Big East champions 78-66 in what would be the only game of the season where UK was completely healthy.

What’s next for Lowe remains to be seen. He was a junior this past season after spending a couple of seasons at Pitt, so he has one more year of eligibility left in college basketball.

Pope said after the second-round NCAA Tournament loss that roster retention is key for his program entering next season. Though, Lowe’s future remains undecided as of this writing.