Bench players must improve for Kentucky to win games

Kentucky entered this season with one of the deepest rosters in college basketball. Now, as we inch closer to March, this team effectively has five or six playable guys. That’s it. Unfortunately, eight or nine guys have to play, and the backups have simply not held their own against SEC competition.

As much as we couch warriors like to say, “These guys are 18 years old! They should be able to run all day!” The reality is, as Cal used to say, these kids are not machines. Fatigue is real, and backup players exist for a reason. That being said, Denzel Aberdeen and Otega Oweh need to play as many minutes as humanly possible. Against Auburn, Aberdeen played 38 minutes, and Oweh played 35. Oweh would have probably stayed in longer if not for foul trouble.

Regardless, whether it is fatigue or fouls, bench players have to play, and thus far in SEC play, the results have been painfully underwhelming. Pope acknowledged as much after the Auburn game, where they only scored eight points off the bench:

“We had so much fatigue on the floor. It’s something we’ve been trying to monitor. We’re trying to manage it with our limited roster. We’ve got to have a couple other guys step up and play a little bit more minutes for us.”

The plus-minus numbers are horrendous

The plus-minus statistic can be deceiving on a game-by-game basis, but spread out over a long stretch, it is often a good indicator of a player’s impact on the game. Through 14 SEC games, all four of Kentucky’s reserves, Mo Dioubate, Brandon Garrison, Trent Noah, and Jasper Johnson, are in the negatives.

Dioubate deserves a pass. His plus-minus is the best of this bunch at -12, and he effectively plays starter minutes. He and Andrija Jelavic are a unique dynamic at the power forward spot, with Jelavic starting and Mo playing more minutes off the bench. That leaves Garrison, Noah, and Johnson. And their numbers are bad.

Player	Minutes Played	Plus-Minus
Brandon Garrison	211	-57
Jasper Johnson	140	-44
Trent Noah	105	-33
Mo Dioubate	294	-12

Remember, every Kentucky starter is in the positives in SEC play.

Player	Minutes Played	Plus-Minus
Denzel Aberdeen	444	+68
Malachi Moreno	324	+68
Andrija Jelavic	200	+29
Otega Oweh	483	+23
Collin Chandler	364	+19

Kentucky reserves have to be better

Start with Jasper Johnson. He is more of a shooting guard, being asked to be Kentucky’s backup point guard, and that is not a favorable position for an undersized freshman. He is known for his scoring, but he must find a way to give something, anything, on defense.

In every advanced defensive metric, Johnson is at or near the bottom of all players in college basketball. The eye test backs up these numbers. On top of poor defense, he has only 10 total rebounds in 140 minutes of action. While modest rebounding numbers are not uncommon for backcourt players, it is a good indicator of his lack of aggressiveness when he doesn’t have the ball.

Johnson’s struggles have been one reason Trent Noah has played more. Against Auburn, Noah played 19 minutes compared to Jasper’s two. He isn’t afraid to get physical and has made some good plays. For whatever reason, though, Noah has lost his shot in SEC play. He has only attempted four 2-point field goals through 14 games, and he has missed them all. From behind the arc, he is shooting just 3-11. For a guy touted as never missing in practice, everyone expects better, including Noah himself.

Finally, what more is there to say about Brandon Garrison? Mark Pope was adamant that he would level up in year two, but outside of his 20-point 11-rebound game against Oklahoma, that has not been the case. When playing any SEC team that exists in a state outside of where he was born, Garrison has never scored more than six points or grabbed more than seven rebounds. Maybe Pope could just tell Garrison that every team we play is Oklahoma, and he wouldn’t know the difference.

Ultimately, “Players should play better” is not expert basketball analysis. Guys are who they are, and asking people with physical limitations to suddenly develop attributes they don’t have is not fair. Kentucky might not even be in this position if Jaland Lowe, Kam Williams, and Jayden Quaintance were not injured.

But two out of these three players are McDonald’s All-Americans. The other is a 4-star recruit sharpshooter. These guys are not exactly walk-ons, and this is Kentucky basketball. They have to be better for the ‘Cats to win.