Five big questions for Kentucky basketball (and John Calipari) going into this offseason
No one expected to be talking about the Kentucky basketball offseason this week. This was supposed to be the Wildcats’ comeback season, and heading into March it looked like that should still be the case.
UK earned a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament, going into March Madness the pick of many to make the Final Four and the pick of some to win the program’s ninth national championship.
Obviously, that didn’t pan out. The Cats were stunned by 15-seeded Saint Peter’s, the biggest upset in UK’s NCAA Tournament history sending John Calipari’s program into an early offseason with more questions than answers.
It’s bound to be a busy few months in the world of Kentucky basketball, and Calipari can’t expect to find much optimism among a fan base that measures success by banners and will be at least eight years removed from the last one by the time the Cats get another shot.
Calipari’s last Final Four came in 2015, closer now to his start date as Kentucky’s coach than the current date on the calendar. His only national championship in 13 seasons with the Wildcats came a decade ago, an inexcusable gap between greatness around these parts.
So, Calipari goes into yet another offseason with some problems on his hands.
Coming off the worst season in modern UK basketball history and the most perplexing NCAA Tournament loss the program has ever endured, he’ll need to find some solutions before Kentucky takes the court again.
Who stays, who goes?
Make no mistake, this will be yet another offseason of considerable roster turnover. Calipari and others have talked about how name, image and likeness reforms — allowing players to make money while still in school — could lead some who aren’t yet prepared for pro careers to stick around. We’ll see. As it stands, expect numerous departures from the program.
Kellan Grady and Davion Mintz are out of college eligibility. TyTy Washington will probably declare for the NBA Draft any day now. Shaedon Sharpe might take a little longer with his decision, but it’s expected that he, too, will leave.
UK starters Oscar Tshiebwe, Keion Brooks and Sahvir Wheeler should probably all be considered in the 50-50 range (at best) on possible returns, though it wouldn’t be a surprise if all three left (and it should probably qualify as a surprise if all three return).
Of the seven regulars on this season’s team, Jacob Toppin seems the most likely to come back, and he could be a major part of next season’s roster. High-upside big man Daimion Collins, a former McDonald’s All-American who played sparingly as a freshman, sounds like he will be returning to the Cats.
There’s more uncertainty further down the depth chart. Dontaie Allen, Bryce Hopkins and Lance Ware will all be the subject of transfer portal rumors until there is unequivocal word otherwise. Don’t be surprised if a couple of those players are playing elsewhere next season.
Five-star combo guard Cason Wallace will be at Kentucky, and transfer guard CJ Fredrick, who sat out this past season with an injury, is expected to be, too. UK has also signed five-star wing Chris Livingston, who seriously considered a jump straight to the professional ranks out of high school, a scenario that never fully died down in conversations with recruiting insiders over the past few months. Livingston is still expected to be at Kentucky, but this time of year, not much is guaranteed until guys actually show up on campus.
Who will be the point guard?
The loss to Saint Peter’s can’t be pinned on any one player. There were plenty of lackluster performances Thursday night, starting with the one by Calipari himself.
The stunning defeat was an interesting look into the highs and lows of Sahvir Wheeler, however. The transfer point guard was one of the best players on two bad Georgia teams before coming to Kentucky, where he led the SEC in assists and was named a finalist for the Bob Cousy Award this season. At times, he looked brilliant. At times, he was incredibly difficult to watch, often barreling toward the basket before throwing up a prayer or whizzing an unnecessary, untimely pass that missed its target.
Against Saint Peter’s, he made some nice plays in key moments. He also committed three turnovers after the final TV timeout on a night filled with questionable decision-making.
It shouldn’t have been that surprising to anyone who had really been watching.
There was talk throughout the season about Wheeler’s frenetic style and how it might play in March. There were grumblings behind the scenes that Calipari should maybe put TyTy Washington in the primary guard role — a more natural fit for his skill set and demeanor — instead of playing him more out of his comfort zone off the ball. But then what would you do with Wheeler, who does play hard and does provide pesky defense but is 5-9 and doesn’t have enough outside shooting pop to keep defenses honest?
Wheeler isn’t John Wall, Brandon Knight or De’Aaron Fox — very few are — but he often plays that same style on offense, and it’s obviously not as effective as he gets deeper into opposing defenses. He’s roughly the same height as Tyler Ulis — the other physical outlier at point guard in the Cal era — but he’s not at Ulis’ level as a “coach on the floor,” as Calipari calls it.
The UK coach has proven he can win with point guards who weren’t college superstars. Andrew Harrison and Marquis Teague have accounted for three of Calipari’s four Final Fours, both of his title game appearances, and his only national title as Kentucky’s coach. They were highly touted recruits, but far from “star” players in Lexington. They deferred to others (and they also had more talent around them than Wheeler did).
Calipari will have to figure out what’s best for next season. Is it running it back with Wheeler as the main man with the ball in his hands? Is incoming freshman Cason Wallace — arguably the best floor leader in high school basketball — the way to go? Is there going to be someone else waiting in the transfer portal who might be a better fit for Kentucky’s style and roster?
The solution here might not be an easy one.
Go hard in the transfer portal?
Last year, Kentucky added Oscar Tshiebwe in the middle of the season, then CJ Fredrick, Kellan Grady and Sahvir Wheeler in the offseason, taking full advantage of the changing NCAA rules to accommodate immediate eligibility for transfers.
There’s every reason to think Calipari will go this route again.
The final game of the season notwithstanding, Calipari has spoken glowingly of how much easier his job was coaching experienced players who knew what they were doing as opposed to 18-year-olds still trying to figure out a new level of basketball. He liked the veteran aspect of this team. And, at this point, that might be his only choice anyway.
Kentucky has just two recruits for next season — Cason Wallace and Chris Livingston — to go along with whoever comes back. As previously mentioned, the expectation that several players will leave means several new spots will open up. And there aren’t really any instant-impact high school recruits left for Kentucky to pursue. So, the transfer portal it is.
Obviously, who the Cats add will largely depend on who they lose. With Grady, Mintz and Washington gone from the backcourt, expect UK to bring in a guard or two (or more) from the transfer portal. The Herald-Leader has been told that Kentucky has also been inquiring about possible frontcourt additions for next season, especially in the case that Oscar Tshiebwe goes pro. Utah Valley big man Fardaws Aimaq — the WAC player of the year last season — has already been linked to UK as a possible target.
There have been assurances behind the scenes that UK will be set in the backcourt, no matter what Wheeler decides to do. It sure sounds like the Cats could be looking for impact players at all positions, and more and more names will start to leak out in the coming days.
Who joins from the 2023 class?
These are questions for the offseason, and the Cats won’t play their first game until a few days before the early signing period begins for class of 2023 recruits. History suggests that Kentucky will have at least a couple of players already committed by then.
So, while the majority of this spring (and possibly summer) will be spent trying to figure out who’s going to play for the Wildcats next season, there will be plenty of work to shore up future rosters, as well. That could also provide a glimpse into Calipari’s strategy moving forward.
It’s possible — perhaps likely — that instead of building recruiting classes featuring a large number of high school players, as Calipari has mostly done in the past, he goes to a model with a select fewer number of youngsters to leave spots for additions out of the transfer portal.
It’ll be interesting to see how things go with the 2023 recruits he has already offered.
Right now, UK has an early commitment from in-state star Reed Sheppard to go along with scholarship offers to seven other uncommitted high school juniors (soon to be seniors). But, of those, the only one Kentucky is thought to be the leader for is No. 1-ranked prospect DJ Wagner (and the recent hire of Kenny Payne at Louisville might complicate that recruitment).
Maybe UK leads for defensive-minded wing Justin Edwards, who would be a great addition for the Cats, but it’s probably a stretch to say that. The others on the Cats’ list — wings Matas Buzelis, Mookie Cook, Mackenzie Mgbako and JJ Taylor, and power forward Kwame Evans Jr. — are either thought to be leaning elsewhere or simply too wide-open to predict at the moment.
Other names will emerge, especially when AAU ball ramps up in April, and additional offers will likely be extended over the next few months. Last year’s coaching staff shakeup was supposed to usher in a recruiting renaissance for the Calipari era. We’ll see what that looks like by the end of this offseason.
Will Calipari make a change?
Here we are again.
Following last year’s disastrous 9-16 season, John Calipari said he was going to take some time to reflect on the state of his program and make some changes.
Somewhat surprisingly, he actually did it.
There was an overhaul of the coaching staff. There was a successful attempt to bring aboard more experienced players from the transfer portal. Calipari even recruited a couple of proven knockdown three-point shooters.
For a while there, Big Blue Nation was happy and the UK coach was back in “swaggy Cal” mode. Fans were pleased to have Orlando Antigua back. The Cats landed, for a time, the No. 1 recruiting class in the country, led by No. 1 overall recruit Shaedon Sharpe. And all was right with Kentucky basketball.
Going into this offseason, that’s no longer the case.
It would be easy to reflect on Thursday night and say that upsets happen in the NCAA Tournament. They do. It would be easy to watch that game and say Saint Peter’s simply made shots they wouldn’t normally make. They did. But it’s hard to ignore the pattern here. It’ll be at least eight years since Calipari went to a Final Four, at least 11 since UK won a national title.
Setting aside the UK coach’s own performances in late-game situations — because that’s a whole other story — his general stubbornness has been a hallmark of this banner drought.
With the way basketball is being played changing around him, Calipari — once viewed as an ultimate agent of change in the sport, don’t forget — has largely stuck to his guns.
Last offseason, many UK fans wanted the Cats to play more like Nate Oats’ Alabama team, which beat Kentucky by a combined 31 points over two games. That clamor wasn’t lost on Calipari. This time around, the Cats swept the Tide, and the UK coach offered a thinly veiled, backhanded remark at the idea of bombing threes the way Bama does.
“There’s all kinds of ways of doing this,” a cheeky Calipari said.
But his seeming aversion to what we’ll simply call “modern basketball” was on striking display in the program’s worst NCAA Tournament loss under any head coach. There was no spacing, the halfcourt offense was a mess, and the lineups usually consisted of three guys who couldn’t make shots from distance.
Calipari liked to bring up that this Kentucky team was at the top of the league in outside shooting percentage. And that’s true. The Cats were second in the SEC in three-point percentage. They were also 13th in the conference in three-pointers attempted, 12th in total points off of long-range shots.
But Calipari’s offense isn’t geared toward getting guys open shots from beyond the arc. And neither were his lineups this season. The computers say UK was one of the best offensive teams in the country, but once opponents figured out how to defend the Cats — collapse on Tshiebwe, keep Grady tied up in transition, among other things — the wheels started to wobble. And over the last month or so of the season, UK shot 27.3 percent from deep.
At the same time, the trademark length and athleticism that have made some of Calipari’s best defensive teams so great was absent from this one. So, what the Kentucky coach had was some players who fit a way of “modern basketball” he doesn’t really want to play on a team that lacked the traits necessary to the style he does prefer. It was a mishmash that looked great some nights, not-so-good others, and, ultimately, it failed.
Yes, upsets happen in March Madness. Sometimes bad shots go in for the other team. Sometimes the pieces don’t fit, or a pandemic wipes out a postseason, or kids miss free throws, or you don’t like a referee’s calls, or the selection committee sticks you with a bad draw.
And, at some point, the excuses start to pile up.
For a Hall of Fame coach who brushes aside early season hiccups and later losses to conference foes by saying everything here is done with March in mind, his track record this time of year hasn’t been great lately. For someone making nearly $9 million a year, it’s results, not rhetoric, that are expected at the end of a season.
The end of this one brings more questions. Now it’s time, yet again, for Calipari to find some answers.
This story was originally published March 21, 2022 at 7:00 AM.
