Film breakdown: a closer look at the development of Wichita State center Kenny Pohto
If the Wichita State men’s basketball team figures to move up in the American Athletic Conference standings, the play of sophomore center Kenny Pohto will likely have to take a leap.
The first four conference games have produced encouraging signs, as Pohto scored a career-high 21 points with a career-high 11 rebounds against East Carolina and he followed that up with another double-double, 14 points and 10 rebounds, to go along with a career-high five assists at South Florida last weekend.
Pohto is averaging 11.3 points, 7.3 rebounds, 2.5 assists, 1.8 steals and 0.8 blocks with a 119.1 offensive rating in conference play. It’s the best stretch of Pohto’s brief career, an elevated level of play the Shockers (8-8, 1-3 AAC) desperately need him to maintain entering Saturday’s home game against Tulsa (4-11, 0-4 AAC) with tipoff slated for 3 p.m. and streaming available on ESPN+.
“He’s getting in better shape,” WSU head coach Isaac Brown said. “He was over in Sweden and got back late and then he had a nagging knee injury. He’s finally starting to get back and he’s a guy that has a high basketball IQ. I think we’ve got to get him the ball a lot more on the block. We’re a better team when we have (him) touch it on the block, so we’ve got to run our offense through him.”
Pohto is far from a finished product, but he seems to be in the process of finding his groove in his sophomore season after a slow start. Here’s a look at four areas examining Pohto’s strengths and weaknesses:
1. Play-making
When Pohto arrived at WSU in 2021, the coaching staff saw signs of the typical European big man in the Sweden native: high IQ with a slick passing touch.
The opportunity to showcase his passing ability never materialized in his first season at WSU, as Pohto tallied just 12 assists in nearly 400 minutes of action. Pohto has nearly doubled that total just halfway through this season, as that skill set is finally beginning to be tapped.
In fact, Pohto’s 21.7% assist rate (the percentage a player assists on field goals when he is on the court) in four AAC games leads the entire WSU team. Even more impressive is that Pohto has just one turnover to 10 assists so far in conference play.
“I’ve been trying to see the floor better and get my teammates open when I get the ball in the post,” Pohto said. “I always tell them to cut and I’ll find them. They trust me and I trust them.”
Pohto’s vision and passing out of the post this season has been superb. In WSU’s 70-66 win at South Florida last weekend, Pohto assisted on the game-tying and go-ahead baskets — both times when he drew a double team with the ball in the post.
Part of Pohto’s success is due to his height: At 6-foot-11, he can see over help defenders and release passes at higher angles. He can also read the movements on the court of players better than most his size, which makes him a lethal threat when defenses send an extra defender his way in the post — if a guard cuts to an open space, there’s a good chance Pohto will find them.
On the go-ahead basket against USF, Pohto tried a spin move to the baseline that was cut off by his defender, recognized a second defender was on the way to double-team and maintained his poise to see that James Rojas had crept behind him. He pump-faked to the spot where Rojas was to fake out the second defender, then slid a bounce pass underneath the goal that earned Rojas a three-point play.
“Once we get the ball down there to Kenny, he sees everything,” Rojas said. “He surveys the court before he does anything else and I know I just have to find an opening and he’s going to find me wherever I am. That’s big-time from a center to be able to do that.”
Pohto’s passing ability hasn’t been realized just on the blocks, as he has also proven capable of being a play-making hub of offense on the perimeter. He registered a pair of assists against USF on well-placed entry passes from the top of the key and has connected on a handful of back-door cuts to guards on fake dribble handoff plays in past games.
For a team that generates among the fewest assists in the country, WSU will need to squeeze everything it can out of Pohto’s passing ability — a trait that could be even more valuable than his scoring this season.
“He’s one of those typical European big guys that has a high basketball IQ,” Brown said. “He came in as a good passer and he’s just continued to get better. He’s one of those guys who’s always looking to make guys around him better.”
2. Post-up touches
Since WSU’s loss to Oklahoma State, Brown has made it clear in the five games since that he wants the offense to play inside-out. And the coach has backed up his words, devising creative ways to funnel the ball to Pohto down low.
That means more post touches for Pohto with the onus shifting to him to set the tone early for WSU with points inside. As detailed above, Pohto is a gifted passer who is starting to blossom in that area of his game, but in terms of becoming a reliable post-up scorer, Pohto still has a long way to go.
To start with the positives, Pohto has an arsenal of clever spins and twists that routinely give him the advantage and produce high-quality looks. The bad news is that he is struggling mightily to finish the quality looks he generates.
Pohto is shooting just 28% and scoring 0.66 points per possession on post-up looks, per Synergy, which ranks worst out of the nine high-volume post players in the American this season.
Because of these inside struggles for Pohto, defenses have been able to muck up offense for WSU by switching everything. The most extreme examples come when defenses are comfortable switching their point guards onto Pohto after ball screens, practically begging for WSU to throw it inside to Pohto to try to score.
It’s been an effective strategy for much of the season, but recently Pohto has started to show he is willing to be more aggressive to exploit those mismatches. He is finishing 58% of his shots at the rim, which isn’t terrible but isn’t great.
If WSU plans to continue to run its offense inside-out, then Pohto must start finishing more of those post-up touches for it to be worth it. Consider this part of Pohto’s game a work in progress.
3. Pick-and-pop game
Pohto has always been utilized as a pick-and-pop center in Wichita State’s offense, meaning he pops to the perimeter for a three-point shot instead of rolling to the rim after a ball screen.
The coaching staff believed last year’s 30% accuracy on three-pointers was the baseline for Pohto. Adding a few percentage points was the expectation this season and if Pohto really shot the ball well, there wasn’t a reason why he couldn’t become a 40% three-point shooter.
Instead, Pohto arrived at WSU this offseason with a lingering knee injury that seemingly derailed his outside shot, which in turn has sapped Pohto of confidence to fire away like he once did. Halfway through the season, Pohto is shooting an ice-cold 14% beyond the arc with just three makes on 22 attempts. Not only that, but WSU has failed to collect an offensive rebound on any of Pohto’s misses — partly because its best offensive rebounder, Pohto, is the one shooting the shot more than 20 feet away from the rim.
Because Pohto has not materialized into a consistent outside threat, defenses are more than willing to have Pohto’s defender momentarily double-team WSU point guard Craig Porter when he comes off a ball screen set by Pohto, which leaves the Swede wide open beyond the arc.
“I know the shots haven’t been falling so far, but all I can do is keep taking them,” Pohto said. “I’m in the gym every day after practice shooting them, so I know I can do it. Right now I’m just trying to find other ways to be a factor for my team. I try to go inside a little more — and hopefully seeing the ball go in more, the threes will come after that.”
If Pohto can regain the confidence in his three-point stroke, WSU’s offense could use the lift. But until then, Pohto has found a way to still be effective and capitalize on the space given to him on those pick-and-pop plays with Porter by turning down the outside shot to drive, collapse the defense and look to either score or pass.
Pohto, who hasn’t made more than one three in a game this season, just needs to see a few jumpers go through the basket. A three-point shot would make him a far more valuable weapon in WSU’s offense, which needs as much juice as possible, but time is running out to salvage what can only be described as a sophomore slump beyond the arc.
4. Rebounding
It’s not a requirement for the center at Wichita State to be a rebound magnet for the team to be a great defensive rebounding team.
The Shockers ranked 12th in the country in defensive rebounding rate in 2013 with starting center Carl Hall collecting just 14.9% of available defensive rebounds when he was on the court.
But the lack of rebounds at the center position certainly sticks out when WSU ranks No. 257 in the country in defensive rebounding rate with Pohto grabbing just 14.1% of available misses.
It’s unfair to pin too much blame on WSU’s rebounding woes on Pohto, who is probably WSU’s most fundamentally sound defender and boxes out almost every time. But his lack of athleticism and explosion make him ground-bound and an easy target to sky over for more athletic forwards and wings, who enjoy free runways to chase offensive rebounds due to the missed box-outs of WSU’s other players.
While defensive rebounding stands as an area where Pohto could certainly improve (the best rebounding centers at WSU topped a 20% defensive rebound rate), offensive rebounding is one of his strengths.
Not only is Pohto grabbing 8.8% of available offensive rebounds, the best rate among the regulars, he is converting 77% of his looks and scoring 1.56 points per possession on put-backs, which ranks in the 98th percentile nationally, per Synergy.
Granted, many of those follow-up chances are a result of his own point-blank misses, but Pohto has the right instincts to be a good offensive rebounder; he just has to match it with the motor to consistently crash the glass in search of put-backs.
This story was originally published January 12, 2023 at 6:00 AM.
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