When the Gators returned to Gainesville following the holiday break there was a difficult decision in the hands of the coaching staff–what to do with returning sophomore Riley Kugel. Kugel was arguably Florida’s most hyped player entering the season but things haven’t gone according to plan. While Kugel’s play has been far from disastrous his poor shooting and turnover numbers often stalled the offense and with the Gators having their deepest roster in years there was talent pushing him for minutes. It was a difficult decision, but against Quinnipiac Todd Golden chose to start Zyon Pullin, who has been playing excellent ball, while sending Kugel to the bench. Pullin used the opportunity to score 16 points while adding 3 assists, fueling the run that built Florida’s insurmountable lead. Coming off the bench, Kugel struggled. He went 0-3 from three including a wide open shot from the left corner, making him 0-18 from deep over his last four games. Inside the arc wasn’t much kinder as he also missed some chippies at the rim, ultimately finishing 2-8 from the field. He did have 10 points, with nearly all of them coming when the game was essentially decided. With the non-conference portion of the season completed there has been a lot to go right for the Gators and their biggest question mark could very well be the play of Riley Kugel, a player that was expected to be their highest scorer entering the season.
So, what is wrong with Riley Kugel?
To begin, we should look at the kind of production so far this season. His stats are as follows:
11.5 Points
4.2 Rebounds
2.0 Assists
25% Three-Point
46% Two-Point
37% Field Goal
Possibly the biggest thing to jump out from these statistics are the shooting percentages. 25% from three is certainly below what you’d like to see from any guard, and 46% from two isn’t something to write home about either. While there are clues from the basic stats that can point to Kugel’s issues, a look into deeper analytics should paint a more vibrant picture.
First off, we need to look at an issue that I wrote about with Kugel before the season at Gator Country, a struggle that he is continuing to face–finishing at the rim. Given that Kugel is an explosive 6’5” athlete you’d think finishing at the rim would come easily but that wasn’t the case in his freshman season, and it hasn’t gotten any better now that he’s a sophomore. Kugel is currently shooting 40% on layups, putting him in the 10th percentile nationally. Hearing this, you can probably picture a number of times this season where he has blown by his defender and elevated to finish–only to have his attempt slide off the rim. Despite having the length and explosiveness to hypothetically be a good finisher, Kugel struggles with touch and balance. When I pointed out the issues he had at the rim as a freshman I thought it was something that could be improved, but his issues have actually gotten worse.
Kugel’s issues aren’t simply with the fact that he misses a lot at the rim–it’s that he doesn’t actually like to get there all that often. When you see the way Kugel uses ball screens or pindown into dribble handoff actions–plays usually used to get an athletic player getting downhill–he instead negates the advantage and elects to try to hide behind a screener and take a dribble jumper. These shots fell at a good rate near the end of last season, but it hasn’t been the case this year. Kugel has taken 44 pull-up jumpers off the dribble this season, an identical number to his 44 layup attempts, but he’s only hitting 29% from three, and 40% from two. Considering that these are the shots Kugel likes to hunt the most, the 0.86 points per possession he’s at leaves a lot to be desired.
On all spot up possessions Kugel is at 0.52 points per possession (7th percentile nationally), and on handoffs he’s at 0.3 points per possession (1st percentile nationally). This points to a player that doesn’t do as well playing without the ball, which was the case for him as a freshman–but his mix of not wanting to get to the rim and struggling when he gets there as well as a pull-up jumper that isn’t falling makes him a tough player to utilize right now.
Should these struggles be a complete surprise to Florida, or could they have seen these coming? Let’s start by comparing some of Kugel’s numbers last year to this year.
We already looked at Kugel’s raw numbers for this season, but in order to balance out the different number of minutes this season to last season, let’s prorate those numbers to a per-40 minute basis:
2022-23 Points: 17.3
2023-24 Points: 16.1
2022-23 Field Goal Attempts: 6.2
2023-24 Field Goal Attempts: 6.0
2022-23 Assists: 1.8
2023-24 Assists: 2.8
2022-23 Rebounds: 4.9
2023-24 Rebounds: 5.8
2022-23 Steals: 1.5
2023-24 Steals: 1.9
2022-23 Turnovers: 2.6
2023-24 Turnovers: 4.0
There are some increases, but generally speaking–Kugel’s numbers are pretty similar this year to last year when you account for the amount of minutes.
I mentioned that last year Kugel struggled finishing at the rim, so let’s compare those numbers:
2022-23 Layups: 48%
2023-24 Layups: 40%
For context, 48% was still well below the national average and Kugel was in the 25th percentile nationally. So, while he was better finishing at the rim as a freshman–it was like it was a particular strength.
Maybe if we look at shooting numbers, we’ll see some major differences between Kugel’s freshman and sophomore seasons:
2022-23 Catch And Shoot Threes: 40%
2023-24 Catch And Shoot Threes: 18%
2022-23 Off The Dribble Threes: 32%
2023-24 Off The Dribble Threes: 29%
Here, we find the one major difference–Kugel is shooting significantly worse this season on catch and shoot threes.
On one hand–this could be encouraging. It’s nearly impossible to imagine Kugel shooting 18% on catch and shoot threes the rest of the season and even if he starts shooting something like 31%, which is well below the national average, it will be a huge improvement from what he is doing right now offensively.
However, on the other hand—it is somewhat concerning to see that Kugel is putting up extremely similar numbers to what he did as a freshman, even though when he was doing it as a freshman he was getting lauded but as a sophomore he is seen as being in a major slump. How could that be? If he is showing similar shooting off the dribble threes and having similar struggles at the rim, how was he looked at as such a quality player to close out Florida’s 2022-23 season and how come he just got sent to the bench in a buy game in December?
Let’s look back at the run Kugel made in the final month of the season to make him one of the most anticipated returners in college basketball.
As we all know, it was when Colin Castleton got injured that Kugel got a much bigger role and started to lead the Gators. Over his last 10 games he averaged 17.3 points per game, putting himself on NBA radars and making his return to Florida a huge news story. However, when you look deeper–things start to look a bit less glamorous. We already looked at Kugel’s finishing at the rim numbers that weren’t great during this time, and his 32% off the dribble threes which is decent–but far from elite at under 1.0 point per possession.
Florida went 3-7 in these 10 games, and their three wins were over teams that were 122nd, 151st, and 154th in KenPom–the 11th, 12th, and 13th highest in the SEC. In Florida’s seven losses during this strength, the Gators had an average margin of defeat of 14.
I don’t say this to suggest Florida’s poor play during this strength was on Riley Kugel. In fact, I think Kugel performed admirably given the situation. However, I do say it to point out that perhaps what Kugel was doing was a bit overrated in the eyes of the media. Right now you can look at every losing team in the country and they will have a player putting up good offensive numbers, and it just could be that during this stretch of losing for the Gators–Kugel was the player to put up numbers when Florida was desperate for anyone to create offense.
To be clear, I think Kugel is an extremely talented player with huge upside, both for this season as well as beyond in his basketball career. However, he was probably given expectations that were too high after he put up numbers during a stretch of inconsequential basketball for the Gators a year ago, and he hasn’t been able to improve on the issues he showed as a freshman. Kugel could still be a hugely impactful player for the Gators this season, and there are almost certainly going to be nights where he is the best player on the floor. However, there are still areas he needs to improve on, and we probably should have been able to see some of the issues coming based on what we saw last year.