The number sounds staggering, and that’s the reason for the knowing grin on Cody Fueger’s face when the subject comes up.

Fueger — the “offensive coordinator” behind new Kentucky coach Mark Pope’s approach to scoring the basketball — has made it clear that he wants this Wildcats’ team to shoot 35 3-pointers per game.

The longtime Pope assistant is serious about that goal. He’s been advertising it ever since his arrival in Lexington, and the look on his face tells you all you need to know about his awareness of how it sounds to the outside world.

It’s ambitious, for sure, perhaps even bordering on basketball lunacy.

That’s been the conventional thinking, at least.

No NCAA Division I team has averaged 35 or more 3-pointers per game since Savannah State put up 38.7 per contest during the 2018-19 season. No team from a major conference has attempted 35 per game since … well … it’s never happened. The 3-point line was universally adopted in college basketball for the 1986-87 season, and no team from a top league has ever shot that many long balls in the nearly 40 years since.

But there’s no denying the direction that basketball at the highest levels has been heading — out to the perimeter, and beyond — and one need only look at how Pope constructed his first UK roster to know that much of the process took place with the 3-ball in mind.

Last season, Pope and Fueger’s offense at BYU averaged 32.0 3-point attempts per game, second nationally behind North Florida’s 33.2.

To put that in perspective: Kentucky’s final offense under John Calipari — viewed as much more wide-open than previous UK teams and boasting the nation’s No. 1 ranking in 3-point percentage — took just 24.2 attempts per game.

And to put the BYU number in further perspective: Analytics darling Nate Oats, who has become somewhat of a poster child for utilizing the 3-pointer in college basketball and has lifted Alabama to national prominence in the process, has never seen one of his Bama teams average more than 31 3-pointers per game in any of his five seasons there.

Fueger, also a coach who obsesses over the numbers, likely knows all of those stats off the top of his head. He knows the goal of shooting 35 per game will be easier said than done. But, sitting in a conference room a few steps away from the UK practice facility, the assistant coach smiled while he talked about it, excited for the challenge and enthused by what he’d seen so far.

“We’re on a good pace right now. We’re throwing a lot at them,” Fueger said. “And they’re going to keep on getting better and better. It’s not very complicated stuff, at the end of the day, that we’re doing. But we just want to get everybody on the same page.”

And getting on the same page — with this entirely new roster — includes getting up as many shots as possible from the summer to the start of the season.

“Reps — over and over again,” Fueger said of the focus. “Because we could stop every single possession and be like, ‘Hey! Your feet gotta be turned this way.’ Or, ‘You gotta do this, you gotta do that.’ But we just want to get them to play and see the game. Because we can’t stop it out there. When it’s game time, they are rolling. ‘How are you gonna adjust? What are you seeing out there?’ So, for us, and what Coach Pope has really pushed is just possession, possession, possession.

“Try to get as many possessions as you can.”

How UK plans to shoot 35 3s per game

It sounds simple enough. Just go out there and start chucking up as many 3-pointers as you can. Getting to 35 in a 40-minute game shouldn’t be that difficult, right?

“It’s tough getting that many 3s up,” said Jaxson Robinson, who was at BYU the past two seasons, making him the only Wildcat to ever play in Pope’s offense. “You definitely have to be well-conditioned. And I think that’s the aspect that our team is slowly starting to realize.”

Simply dribbling the ball up the court and passing it around for the best shot won’t get this job done, and starting down the path to 35 3s per game wasn’t the easiest adjustment to make.

Andrew Carr, a 6-foot-11 power forward with 3-point capabilities, spilled the beans toward the beginning of summer practice that the team had a goal of getting the ball over halfcourt in the first three seconds of the shot clock on every single possession. That’s quick.

Robinson told the Herald-Leader of another wrinkle to that fast-paced approach.

“Usually when we practice, we practice with 14 seconds on the shot clock,” he said. “We don’t play with 30 seconds. So he likes to get ’em up fast and make sure that we get back in transition and get a stop. And then we’re out again.”

That kind of tempo has to be music to Kentucky fans’ ears. The players say they love it, too, but it certainly takes some getting used to.

“I’ll tell you a funny story,” Robinson said.

His tale from one of UK’s earliest summer practices involved a game of three-on-three. Carr came off a screen, got the ball, and looked for his best offensive opening. Wrong move, Robinson said.

“Coach Pope stopped the whole practice and told Andrew, ‘If you don’t shoot it, you’re not going to play.’ And everybody looked around like they were all confused, because I’m sure that nobody’s had a coach like that.”

This wasn’t one of those instances of a player passing up a wide-open 3-pointer on the wing. It was instead one of a guy — a 6-11 guy, remember — being scolded for not taking a perimeter shot in basically the instant one became available, regardless of whether a better one could be found later in the clock or not.

For most in the gym, it was eye-opening.

“I think it will be really, really cool to be able to play super fast and have the freedom to be as aggressive as early as possible in the clock,” Carr said. “… That’s a really fun way to play. And not many coaches are telling you, ‘If you don’t shoot the ball, you’re gonna sit next to me.’ …

“It’s an adjustment for us as players, to know that the coaches — not only do they believe in us — but that it’s really a good shot for the team. And you have to take that shot.”

Three words have been commonly used by coaches and players to describe this new UK offense — fast, free and fun — and Robinson can attest to the accuracy of them all.

He played relatively sparingly in his first two college seasons — at Texas A&M and Arkansas, respectively — before transferring to BYU as a junior, finding a bigger role as he came to develop a mutual trust with Pope, Fueger and the Cougars’ coaching staff.

Robinson’s second season there coincided with BYU’s all-in shift to perimeter shooting — jumping from 23.9 to 32.0 per game — and he led the team in both scoring and 3-pointers. That fun transition is something he’s been able to see in his new Kentucky teammates.

“It’s great for everybody,” Robinson said. “I know, for me personally, it opened up my game completely when we just started to get out in transition and run, and everybody’s getting open shots from moving the ball. That’s what Coach Pope loves to see is just ball movement, getting the ball up the court. We want to advance the ball up the court as fast as we can, and it allows everybody to do what they need to do. So, I love the offense, and I know everybody else does.”

Fueger has made clear that getting out in transition and finding 3-point opportunities before the defense can get set is going to be a major component of this Kentucky offense.

Ansley Almonor — a 6-7, 232-pound forward — said that the style is incredibly tiring on defenses. “I don’t know how these teams are going to try to defend us all game long.”

It’ll be especially tough with the shooting talent that Pope trots out there.

At the top of the list is Koby Brea, who made 100 3-pointers at the staggering rate of 49.8% for Dayton last season. Fueger marveled at the analytics behind Brea’s ability to score in transition — a particular strength for Robinson, too — and plans to squeeze as much offense as possible out of that trait this season.

Brea did his homework on BYU’s offense before picking Kentucky over perhaps the most star-studded list of finalists — Duke, Kansas, North Carolina and UConn — in transfer portal history. The kind of freedom he’ll be afforded is a big part of the reason he’s here, and he’s already enjoying himself, even if it’s taken him out of his comfort zone.

“As you all will see throughout the season, we take some pretty …,” — Brea paused briefly here, searching for a positive way to describe it — “maybe a lot of people would say ‘bad shots.’ But it’s just like, in our offense, we’re kind of open and free to take some pretty uncomfortable shots. … He’ll literally stop practice if we don’t take a shot that he feels like we should have took.

“As a player, that’s what you want out of your coach. He’s literally giving you the green light — all the ultimate confidence. And he’s not doing it just for me or another player. He’s doing it for the whole group.”

The 3-pointer and Kentucky basketball

Whether UK hits its goal of 35 perimeter attempts per game or not, this is going to be a big change for those who have watched the Wildcats over the years.

Calipari didn’t exactly encourage letting it fly over his 15 seasons as head coach.

His final run with the Wildcats was an outlier, and even that campaign — featuring sharpshooters such as Reed Sheppard, Antonio Reeves and Rob Dillingham — has been criticized after the fact as too conservative.

Calipari’s final UK team led the nation at 40.9% from beyond the arc, but his Wildcats were just 85th nationally in attempts per game (24.2) and only 37.3% of their overall field-goal attempts came from 3-point range, putting them 179th in the country in that stat. (By comparison, 50.7% of BYU’s overall attempts were 3-pointers.)

And, for Calipari, that was as green as the light ever got.

Before last season, none of his previous 14 teams at UK averaged more than 20 3-point attempts per game, and his Cats had never finished higher than 273rd nationally in rate of 3-pointers to overall shot attempts over the previous 12 years. (The high mark in his tenure for that stat was 2010-11, when the Cats were 180th in the country with 32.4% of their shots coming from the perimeter.)

And Kentucky, compared to the rest of the country, has never been the most prolific of 3-point shooting teams.

Billy Gillispie was 239th and 257th nationally in that stat in his two seasons. Tubby Smith’s teams were more prone to perimeter shooting than most — finishing in the top 100 on four occasions but never higher than 68th overall.

Rick Pitino’s first UK team — an undermanned bunch nicknamed Pitino’s Bombinos due to their penchant for bombing perimeter shots to try and stick with or upset often-superior opponents — still holds the school record for 3-point attempts with 28.9 per game, a mark that seems almost certain to fall by the end of the 2024-25 season. Pitino’s 1995-96 national title team, with Pope as a captain, averaged only 18.6 3-point attempts per game.

If Pope and Fueger have their way, these Cats might hit that number by halftime on some nights.

Robinson said UK’s coaches have let this team know from “day one” that they expect them to play fast and look for those 3-pointers as much and as early as possible. He acknowledged — and Fueger confirmed — that 35 was the goal at BYU last season, too. That squad didn’t quite make it, but Robinson says this UK group — as a whole — is both “more talented” and “more athletic” than his teammates from a season ago.

He said he couldn’t promise 35 3-pointers per game. But he certainly thinks it’s possible.

“It is difficult. But, I mean, this is an elite group of guys. So, we’ll see.”

Are there enough shots to go around?

Forget whether UK can get to 35 3-pointers per game for a moment. Perhaps the biggest question: Would that even be enough shots for this particular group of Wildcats?

Early team leader Lamont Butler — billed as one of the best backcourt defenders in college basketball — was asked if there’s one guy in practice that you just can’t back off of on the perimeter. He didn’t hesitate.

“That’s everybody,” Butler said. “Everybody. You can’t back off no one.”

The fifth-year guard then brought up the apparently true story of freshman Travis Perry knocking down 59 3-pointers in a row one day in the Craft Center, using that as an opener to list off impressive individual shooting exploits from several of his other teammates.

“Everybody can shoot,” Butler said.

The stats back that up.

Brea’s numbers from last season (100 3s at 49.8%) are eye-popping. Point guard Kerr Kriisa made 61 3-pointers in 23 games at a 42.4% rate at West Virginia last season. Almonor made 93 perimeter shots at 39.4% at Fairleigh Dickinson, and Robinson led BYU with 81 3-pointers, shooting 35.4%.

All four of those players led their teams in 3-point shooting.

Carr — the 6-11 forward — was 37.1% from deep with 36 3-pointers. Otega Oweh made only 20 3s as a sophomore at Oklahoma last season, but he shot 37.7% from deep. And all three of UK’s freshmen — Collin Chandler, Trent Noah and Perry — count 3-point shooting as among their most impressive basketball attributes.

Only the team’s two centers — Amari Williams and Brandon Garrison — aren’t 3-point threats. The seven other Wildcats who played college basketball last season combined to take a total of 34.1 3-pointers per game, fewer than one shot short of this team’s goal.

That’s leaving the freshmen out of it, and some of those veterans’ numbers will surely be going up. UK’s coaches are already telling Carr he needs to shoot more 3s. He had 2.8 attempts per game last season.

“I think — for the way that Coach Pope wants to play and the way that I’ll be able to fit into the offense — I think that’s where I really need to focus on taking those next steps,” he said.

Oweh — a 6-4 guard with the strength to get to the basket — also said 3-point shooting has been a point of emphasis during his brief time in Lexington so far. He attempted only 1.7 3s per game last season. Pope has encouraged him to take more at Kentucky.

“I’m knocking the 3-ball down very well, so if I just continue to keep shooting, that opens up everything,” he said of his three-level scoring ability.

The coaches’ plans for Brea might include more looks, even on this crowded roster. He watched plenty of BYU game film before picking Kentucky and noticed how active Pope was on the sidelines during games.

“But I didn’t know that he gives that much confidence to his players,” Brea said. “And how freely and open he is to players creating for themselves and creating for others. He gives us a system to run, but he kind of lets us just flow on our own. I’ve never been around that. Most of the coaches, they try to hold you back a little bit. They want to run their sets. They want to run their plays.

“But he’s just like, ‘I’m gonna give you a whole lot of stuff. Now you guys take care of the rest.’”

Almonor’s 3-point attempts — 7.4 per game at mid-major FDU — are sure to come down. Kriisa (6.3 per game at West Virginia) has already implied he’s looking to be more of a facilitator on this team. Butler (2.9 per game at San Diego State) might be in a similar position.

But Chandler — a former top-40 recruit — should get plenty of shots, and Perry and Noah — 11.3 and 6.1 3-point attempts per game, respectively, as high school seniors — will have the green light if they get on the court.

“Part of it is, like, you gotta sacrifice a little bit for the group,” Brea said. “But we play so fast that we could easily get up so many more shots. … That’s something that Coach emphasizes every day in practice: Play fast, play fast, play fast. And I think it’s good for the group, because, the faster you play, the more shots everybody else can take.”

All of those players who can make 3s will mean plenty of open space for cuts to the rim — another hallmark of the Pope/Fueger offense, which saw loads of uncontested 2-point looks last season — as well as second-chance scoring opportunities off the glass.

So, the big guys won’t be left out.

“I love to pass. You know, find cutters,” Williams said. “So I feel like it’s the perfect offense for me to do well in. And especially with all the shooters we have. It’s kind of easy to find someone. Someone’s going to be able to put up a shot. I love it so far.”

Not enough shots to go around? That’s not a worry for Robinson, who already knows this offense inside and out and has seen what his new teammates are capable of.

“Since I’ve gotten here, there has not been one ego that I’ve seen on the court,” he said. “Everybody’s been willing to do what they have to do for us to win. And like I said, Coach Pope, the players, the coaches, it doesn’t matter who it is — we all came in here knowing what we needed to do, and that’s win a championship. And if that means you gotta put up five shots or that means you gotta put up zero shots and grab 10 rebounds — it doesn’t matter what it is.

“But everybody’s on the same page when it comes to just knowing that points don’t necessarily matter. And nobody’s gonna eat if we don’t win ball games. So, you know, the shots don’t matter.”

Who gets those shots doesn’t matter. As long as they take the open ones, right?

Robinson smiled.

“That’s right.”

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