Kentucky basketball mailbag: Point guards, recruiting talk and season predictions

The final installment of our Kentucky basketball mailbag is here.

The first edition focused on this season’s roster, the second centered on UK’s recruiting efforts, and this final post will take on a hodgepodge of issues surrounding the program.

Thanks, as always, for the great questions. Here’s part three …

What a difference having a true point guard makes! Last year’s Cats didn’t move the ball well at all in the half court, and they couldn’t seem to hold on to the ball. These Cats are moving the ball and seem way more sure-handed. What do you think?

I think you’re exactly right.

It doesn’t need to be repeated that last season’s team was a slog to watch. A lot of that had to do with the stagnant offensive play in half-court sets and the inability of pretty much everyone on the team to get past anybody with the ball in his hands.

Not so this season.

Having someone like Sahvir Wheeler is a game-changer for John Calipari’s offensive approach. The way he can penetrate that first line of perimeter defense, seemingly whenever he wants, opens up so many opportunities that just weren’t there last season. Freshman TyTy Washington has also shown that he can get past his man, and he has the size and skill to pull up over the next line of defense or take it straight to the hoop.

Obviously, once Wheeler or Washington get by that first layer, the help defense comes, and that creates space for teammates. UK has plenty of other players — Kellan Grady, Keion Brooks, Davion Mintz, when he returns — that have the ability to make moves toward the basket if the defense is just a little off balance. Brooks can take bigger defenders off the bounce. And if an opponent tries to play zone, this team should have the ability to make open threes. It also helps to have the incomparable Oscar Tshiebwe to clean up on the offensive glass in half-court situations.

This is a complete 180 from Kentucky’s offense last season, and it all starts with those point guards breaking down the top of the defense. (I still think BJ Boston could have excelled playing alongside someone like Wheeler, but that’s a debate for another time).

The perimeter defense is going to get tougher once the mid-December and league games begin, but there’s no reason to think Wheeler and Washington can’t keep this up. If Wheeler, especially, looks to pass first — and passes up contested shots — once he gets to that second level of defense, this team could go a long way.

A bonus here will be late-game, close-game situations. Last season, such scenarios were a disaster for the Cats, primarily because no one could create. Final, crucial possessions often turned into Bad News Bears on the basketball court. UK was 3-7 in games decided by less than five points, not coincidentally. (And two of those three wins came against Vanderbilt).

With Wheeler and Washington running the show, ample three-point shooting, and Tshiebwe as a put-back option down low, the Cats should have lots of options in crunch time this season.

Do you see SEC teams planning to zero in on Oscar to try and get him into foul trouble early? That’s what I would do. The only weakness I see with this bunch is their relative lack of bulk. I think teams are going to try to play bully ball against them. What’s your take?

Surely that’s what they’ll try to do.

The eyeballs alone say this is a completely different Kentucky team with Tshiebwe out.

The numbers drive that point home even more.

HoopsInsight.com had a cool post this week showing how well the Cats play with Tshiebwe and Keion Brooks on the court at the same time, and the numbers around Tshiebwe were particularly striking.

Be sure to check out the entire breakdown, but one big takeaway is that UK scores a staggering 1.43 points per possession with both Tshiebwe and Brooks on the court. That number is 1.25 with Oscar and no Keion, and it falls off to 1.04 when Tshiebwe is on the bench. With Oscar sidelined this season, the Cats are minus-11 scoring in 123 possessions. And we’re talking about a team with a winning margin of 23.2 points per game here.

Obviously, the Cats need Tshiebwe on the court. And opposing coaches need him on the bench, especially with no clear alternative for Kentucky in the post.

Freshman Daimion Collins will probably continue to run hot and cold this season as he progresses with his development. Sophomore Lance Ware should have some great basketball ahead of him, but he’s been injured for most of the season and doesn’t yet look ready to be a 20-minute guy against SEC competition. The fact that Calipari is mentioning 6-foot-6 Bryce Hopkins as a possible second-best post player should ring some alarm bells. He looked great in that spot the other night against smaller opponents, but that setup probably wouldn’t go well against many teams UK will face moving forward.

So, yeah, SEC coaches are going to try and pin Tshiebwe with foul trouble. His sheer size (255 pounds) and the way he plays (all out, all the time) will surely lead to some bad foul calls due to Tshiebwe simply being bigger than whoever he’s battling. College officiating can be, let’s just say, “inconsistent.”

Kentucky’s point guard play, three-point shooting and team defense looks like they’ll be solid enough to make the Cats a contender this season. The single most important thing on many nights will be keeping Tshiebwe on the floor for 28-30ish minutes per game. And you better believe opposing coaches are going to try to limit those minutes.

Why is UK not taking a three-star or four-star big man and developing them into a starting center over time? Someone like Nazr Mohammed comes to mind…

This is a good thought, and it would be fun to watch such a player progress over time. But it’s much easier said than done, especially the way Calipari recruits at Kentucky.

Obviously, Calipari operates almost exclusively in that five-star range when it comes to recruiting, and that makes it tough to venture to “lower” levels. The issue with recruiting four-star players (typically guys ranked between No. 30 and No. 125ish nationally) is that a lot of those recruits can go to other major schools and play right away as freshmen. And those players also know that even if Calipari takes him in his class, the UK coach almost certainly will be looking to take a five-star player in the next class, and the next class after that. So, if you’re the No. 75 recruit in the country, for instance, you might never get a chance at serious minutes at Kentucky if the Cats keep hitting on five-star center targets in the classes that follow. Part of development is playing, after all.

Moving down to the three-star range brings similar issues — they can go elsewhere and have a better chance at more immediate minutes — and it also makes things even tougher to predict.

The “5” spot might be the toughest position to project from high school to college — outside of the very best center prospects — and that gets to be even more true the further down the recruiting lists you go. Frankly, there just aren’t a ton of three-star-type bigs that turn into college stars.

Looking at the CBS Sports list of the Top 100 college basketball players for the 2021-22 season, for example, here’s what I found:

There are 13 returning college players on that Top 100 list — I’m not counting freshmen here — that most would probably classify as centers, and a few others that could probably count as “bigs,” depending on your definition. Only two of those players were three-star recruits coming out of high school. Both happen to play for Purdue: senior Trevion Williams, who was No. 154 in the 247Sports composite rankings (just out of four-star range), and sophomore Zach Edey, who was No. 440 nationally, due in large part to a late move from Canada to the United States, where he played only one season of high school ball.

The rest were highly touted recruits like Kofi Cockburn, David McCormack, Mark Williams, Oscar Tshiebwe, and the list goes on.

So, to zero in on a three-star guy and hope to make him an eventual starter on a Final Four team is taking a mighty big risk, no matter how well you think you can develop. Recent example: UK was tied to Frank Anselem late in the 2020 recruiting cycle, when the Cats were scrambling for a big man. They ultimately passed, and Anselem — the No. 201 recruit in that class — went to Syracuse. He’s averaging 2.7 points and 2.7 rebounds in 11.7 minutes per game as a sophomore this season.

Obviously, that’s just one example — and Anselem could develop into a star big man down the road — but for every Trevion Williams, there are 10 or 20 similarly ranked big men in every class that most college basketball fans will never hear of.

To put it bluntly, it’s just extremely difficult to identify, recruit and then develop such a big man — all while keeping him content to sit for a season or two — in the current landscape and in a program that wants to contend for national titles every season.

The no-sit NCAA transfer portal makes it even easier for Kentucky to go the other way: try and recruit five-star big men in every class, and play the portal game if you miss. At that point, you can choose among highly touted guys who didn’t like their first college choice (like Tshiebwe) or possibly underrated recruits who developed elsewhere and are now looking for a bigger challenge.

It’s a gamble to rely on the transfer portal late in a recruiting cycle, but it seems like an even bigger crapshoot to play the long game with a lesser-touted recruit.

Is Kentucky’s latest recruiting success for 2022 and apparently 2023 more due to Tony Barbee and Joel Justus leaving UK and being replaced by Chin Coleman and Orlando Antigua? Or Roy Williams and Coach K retiring? Or something else?

The recent recruiting run Kentucky has enjoyed is due to a confluence of issues.

But the two biggest reasons so far seem to be the emergence of name, image and likeness reforms and the plain fact that the past few recruits Kentucky has landed were scenarios perfectly set up in the Wildcats’ favor.

UK’s 2022 class features Skyy Clark, Cason Wallace, Shaedon Sharpe and Chris Livingston.

Clark was recruited by Justus and committed when he was still on staff. Wallace was primarily recruited by Jai Lucas, who joined the staff before last season. In both cases, UK was clearly the dream school for these players.

Sharpe will be at Kentucky later this winter, in very large part, to the job Calipari and the previous UK staff did with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who had the same basketball mentor as Sharpe, a relationship that carried over to this recruitment. Sharpe was a major UK lean before the staff shakeup.

The Cats’ only 2023 commitment so far, Reed Sheppard, has UK ties that anyone reading this surely already knows all about. It’s likely he would have been a Wildcat no matter what.

Livingston is the outlier here, and while the Kentucky coaching staff did a great job on him — with a lot of that credit to Coleman — it seems highly unlikely that he would be playing college basketball if not for NIL reforms. For most of Livingston’s recruitment, the expectation was that he would ultimately sign a major money deal to play in the G League or some other pro route straight out of high school.

Now, that’s not to say the new assistant coaches don’t deserve some credit here. They played a part in reassuring guys like Clark, Sharpe, Wallace and Sheppard that this Kentucky program — with this staff — was the right choice in each case. And, judging from recent conversations with parents and coaches linked to those players, the two new UK assistants have done a great job in building those relationships in a short amount of time.

The real recruiting value of having those guys on staff will be seen over the next several months.

Quick aside to answer the Roy/Coach K portion of the question. That’s not a factor yet. Quite frankly, UNC wasn’t really battling Kentucky for recruits — successfully, at least — over the past several seasons, and it’s looking like Jon Scheyer’s Duke is going to be just as formidable on the recruiting trail as Coach K’s Duke, at least for the time being.

Back to the new staff: the real change will be felt if Kentucky can land top-10 players in recruitments that start from scratch. Obviously, NIL is going to help. The Kentucky brand is going to help. And Calipari’s presence — especially with cases like No. 1 recruit DJ Wagner — is going to help.

Antigua is one of the best communicators and relationship-builders I’ve seen on the recruiting trail, Coleman comes to UK with a lot of connections and a great reputation, and Lucas is widely viewed as a rising young star in college basketball coaching circles.

Starting with the 2023 class, if these guys can land multiple players from a top-15ish pool of targets that includes Wagner, Mookie Cook, Kwame Evans Jr., JJ Taylor, Matas Buzelis, Justin Edwards and others — then that will be a clear sign that the offseason shakeup is paying off and Kentucky is back to its early Cal-era recruiting ways.

I think it’s a likely scenario.

Providing they stay healthy, what’s your win-loss prediction for Kentucky’s tough SEC schedule, and how deep do you think they can go in March?

Fun one to end on.

Also a tough one, given the often unpredictable nature of league play.

As of now, eight of Kentucky’s 18 SEC games will be against Top 25 teams. (The Cats also play LSU twice, and the Tigers should probably be ranked; KenPom has them No. 15). The league doesn’t have any super-elite teams just yet, but it looks like there could be a whole lot of really good ones. Crowds will be back for road games — Everybody’s Super Bowl, T-shirt Night, etc. — and five of those games against ranked teams will be away from Rupp Arena (plus a sixth at LSU).

This UK team does seem better equipped to deal with the often punishing SEC travel schedule, compared to most of Calipari’s previous squads, thanks in large part to veteran experience and what should be steady point guard play. Still, it’s going to be tough.

I’ll say the Cats go 12-6 in the SEC, and that would be a great finish against this slate.

As far as March goes, I thought anything beyond the Sweet 16 would be a major win for this team coming into the season. Perhaps that was too conservative.

Anything can obviously happen in the NCAA Tournament — Oscar gets in foul trouble, Cats go 4-for-32 from three, etc. — so no finish should necessarily be a surprise, but maybe Elite Eight should be the expectation for this bunch.

If Sahvir Wheeler plays within himself in March, TyTy Washington keeps progressing toward star territory, and Tshiebwe stays on the court, this team certainly has enough weapons to make a run to the final weekend of the season. These Cats are far from invincible, but they sure seem like they could be a group capable of knocking off any team on any given night in March (and maybe early April).

They’ll surely be battle-tested by the time Selection Sunday rolls around.

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