Mark Pope sees similarities between Jaland Lowe and Lamont Butler's numbers

Heading into his time with Kentucky under Mark Pope last season, Lamont Butler's shooting numbers weren't very efficient. The San Diego State product shot 42.1 percent overall in his last season with the Aztecs, on 8.2 field goal attempts per game. His numbers from three-point range weren't much better, as he averaged 2.9 threes per game on a 30.2 percent clip. Looking at incoming transfer point guard Jaland Lowe, he and Butler share some similarities in their numbers.

Last season at Pitt, Lowe had a very high usage rate. The 6-3 guard averaged a staggering 14.3 field goal attempts on 37.6 percent shooting, which is much more than his 8.8 average shot attempts the year before. He also shot an average of 5.0 three-point attempts per game, hitting them at just a 26.6 percent clip. Mark Pope sees the vision and the similarities between Lowe and Butler, and if Butler's leap in numbers is any indication, Lowe should be in for an impressive Junior season in Lexington. The head coach talked in-depth about that in an interview with KSR.

"So, Jaland Lowe was an elite-level, in terms of the raw stats, points, assists. Everything else he did in the game was really good. But, he wasn't a super efficient player last year. Part of it was because he had to do a lot. It's no take away from Pitt. ...It was just the situation he was in. One of the things he did, he was in the 90th percentile in the country, in the top ten percent, of taking the highest percentage of shots that are in the bottom twenty percent of shot quality. ...However that happened, he was trying to make the hardest plays in the game of basketball and make them over and over again. Not incrediblely dissimilar, in some ways, from Lamont Butler. Lamont Butler's shot quality usage wasn't quite as significant when he came, but it was still a little bit of that trend. He had never been 40 percent from two, he'd never been, really, above 33 percent from three. He comes here, he shoots 39.1 percent from three on the season, suffering half the season with a dibilitating shoulder injury, and was at 56 percent from two, an eight percentage jump in a super senior. So much of that was because he was humble enough and willing enough to, like, 'let me rethink this game a little bit.'"Pope on similarities with Lowe, Butler.

Mark Pope knows what he did with Lamont Butler, making him much more efficient, can definitely be done the same way with Jaland Lowe. "With a little bit of study and a little bit of humility and curiosity, like, we can transform your efficiency like crazy," Pope said about what he loves seeing in certain players. That's exactly the goal with Lowe, who is coming in to a much different system, one that will not just take a lot off of his plate, but also allow him to take more efficient shots.

The proof is there with what Pope did with Butler, a massive jump in his numbers, which he recently showed off at the G League Camp in Chicago that caught the interest of a number of teams. Lowe has a very similar path to what Butler had entering his time with Kentucky.