Mark Pope and his staff landed four-star Pittsburgh transfer Jaland Lowe back in the beginning of April, filling the point guard void after fifth-year senior Lamont Butler exhausted his NCAA eligibility. 

Lowe, a 6-foot-3, rising junior, had a breakout sophomore campaign in “the Burgh,” concluding the season with an average of 16.8 points, 4.2 rebounds and 5.5 assists per game, all a notable increase in comparison to his freshman season as a Panther. 

Lowe’s 2024-25 numbers show that out of all incoming Kentucky transfers, the ascending junior had the highest points per game average last season, with Arizona State transfer Jayden Quaintance sitting in second, finishing with an average of 9.4 points per game.

In addition to that, Lowe also averaged the most assists out of all incoming transfers and it wasn’t even close as Quaintance, again, was the nearest with 1.5 assists per game. 

But with such a notable rise in numbers and a demanding statistical lead in comparison to the other incoming Cats, Lowe still has a big fret tattooed onto his name as he was worryingly inconsistent last season, something even Pope acknowledged in an interview that he did with Kentucky Sports Radio. 

“Jaland Lowe was elite in terms of raw stats. Points, assists, everything else he did in the game was really good,” Pope told KSR. “But he wasn’t a super-efficient player last year. Part of it was because he had to do a lot.”

However, what Pope didn’t mention is that Lowe played through a small, yet significant injury on his shooting hand. 

Lowe’s father, Marland, joined WLAP’s Sunday Morning Sports Talk on April 20, just 15 days after Lowe announced his move to Lexington.

“From November through January, he (Jaland) was basically playing with a broken ring finger on his left hand,” Marland told WLAP. 

The left hand that Marland mentioned happens to be his sons dominant shooting hand. 

It’s hard not to wonder if Lowe’s finger injury caused the inconsistency that Pope touched on, or the heavy amount of work that Lowe had to do on a struggling Pittsburgh team that finished 17-15 while failing to earn a bid to the NCAA Tournament.  

Lowe averaged a team-high 35.5 minutes per contest, which equates to him playing an average of 88.7% of each game. The closest player that was used as much as Lowe was fifth-year senior Ishmael Leggett, who played a near-similar 35.4 minutes per game.

On top of that, Lowe played a full 40 minutes in six different contests throughout the season and included in those six different games, was two games where he happened to play more than 40 minutes due to the contest reaching overtime.

Through the 31 games that Lowe played in, he finished with the lowest field-goal percentage (37.6%) in comparison to the five other Panthers who played in at least 30 games, but is worth noting that Lowe ripped off the highest number of field-goal attempts per game, tallying an average of 14.3 field-goal tries per game, with the second closest being Leggett, who attempted 12.4 field-goals per game. 

Lowe accumulated a concerning 26.6% 3-point percentage while taking an average of five 3-pointers per game, which is alarming considering Pope historically likes to have his squads unleash a large amount of 3-pointers per game.

Lowe had 15 different games where he shot 20% or less when attempting at least three 3-point shots, however, he did show some flashes of strong deep ball shooting throughout the season, shooting 4-7 (57.1%) against LSU on Nov. 22, 4-9 (44.4%) against Mississippi State on Dec. 4 and 3-6 (50%) against North Carolina on Jan. 28. 

Before playing through his injury, as a freshman, Lowe shot a near-similar 38.8% field-goal percentage but a notably better 35.2% 3-point percentage on an average of 2.3 less 3-point attempts per game, which brings back into the question just how much or if Lowe’s game really suffered at all due to the injury.

In the end, Lowe still averaged a brawny 16.8 points per game and saw his overall stats improve from the previous season.

Being more consistent would aid the Cats to greater success, but if Lowe could average anywhere near 16.8 points per game again, the transfer will be a great addition to Kentucky.