Kentucky is now down two point guards. What happens next? ‘We’re gonna need Cason.’
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Game day: Vanderbilt 68, Kentucky 66
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader’s and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Wednesday’s men’s basketball game between Kentucky and Vanderbilt in Rupp Arena.
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In a normal Kentucky season, what happened Wednesday night in Rupp Arena would have been classified as a basketball disaster.
When the Wildcats walked off their home court on Senior Night, the scoreboard read: Vanderbilt 68, Kentucky 66. It snapped a 14-game UK winning streak in the series. It was the first time the Commodores had left Lexington with a victory in 16 years. It was the Cats’ 10th loss of the 2022-23 campaign. It prevented Kentucky from clinching a “double bye” in next week’s Southeastern Conference Tournament, for now, and it eliminated the momentum that the Wildcats had found over the previous two weeks, when they won four straight games and vaulted from nowhere into the Associated Press Top 25.
But by now it’s clear that this is not a normal Kentucky season. And if there was a basketball disaster on the court Wednesday night, none of those things would be at the top of the list.
The low point of UK’s night came well before Vandy’s Jordan Wright hit a jumper with 2.6 seconds left to break a 66-all tie and set the final score. It came before Antonio Reeves missed a three-pointer at the buzzer that ended any hope of a Kentucky victory.
These Wildcats had already endured plenty of losses — in plenty of different ways — over the course of the season. And they’d surely already won enough in the past two weeks to lock up a spot in the NCAA Tournament.
The question now is how healthy they’ll be when the real madness begins.
With 18:25 left in the game, UK freshman Cason Wallace — a major reason for the Wildcats’ recent resurgence — drove the lane and rose up for a mid-range jumper. Before he even landed, something was clearly wrong. When Wallace did come back down to the court, he quickly hopped off of it in pain. As Vandy took the ball down to the other end, Wallace tried to hobble back onto the court and quickly crumpled to the floor in pain.
When he finally got up, he limped to the UK bench. After a few minutes of being tended to there, he limped back to the UK locker room. He never returned to the Rupp Arena court. And as a projected lottery pick in this year’s NBA Draft, it stands to reason that he never will.
Not in a Kentucky uniform, at least.
That will all be settled after the season. And it’s safe to say the season now hinges on Wallace’s ability to get back onto the court in a somewhat timely manner.
When Wallace planted for that jump shot, his left ankle turned awkwardly. With 8 minutes left in the game, UK had already announced that he would be unable to return with a “lower leg injury.” After the game, Coach John Calipari expressed cautious optimism but didn’t put any timetable on Wallace’s recovery.
“They X-rayed. He’s fine. It’s not swelled,” Calipari said. “So, we’ll see. I’m hoping that he’ll be OK for Saturday, but I don’t know.”
Saturday is the regular-season finale at Arkansas. Next week is the SEC Tournament.
The Cats (20-10, 11-6 SEC) have enough on their overall résumé that they can afford two more losses. But the first full day of the NCAA Tournament is now just two weeks away, and — for UK to have much of a chance at a run there — the Wildcats will need Wallace back and effective.
And as long as he’s out, there’s not much of a backup plan.
Senior point guard Sahvir Wheeler missed his seventh consecutive game Wednesday with an ankle injury, and Calipari said earlier in the day that he had a “minor procedure” for something unrelated to that injury. The UK coach later said he expected Wheeler to miss another two to three weeks, a timeline that would extend into the NCAA Tournament.
“So this is who we have right now,” Calipari acknowledged.
With Wallace and Wheeler both out, the Cats were left scrambling at the most important position on the court. Reeves (a shooting guard) handled some of those duties. Freshman wing Adou Thiero did, too. Senior shooting guard CJ Fredrick handled the ball in the halfcourt offense. A few others brought it up the court, including power forward Jacob Toppin.
And, somewhat amazingly, Kentucky almost pulled out a victory despite losing Wallace and shooting pitifully: 19-for-59 from the field and 3-for-19 from three-point range.
Oscar Tshiebwe managed 21 points and 20 rebounds in what might have been his final home game as a UK player. He scored a bucket with 1:10 left to give Kentucky a 66-64 lead, the Cats’ only advantage of the second half, and a brief one. Wright tied it with a driving layup on the next possession and won it with that jumper in the final seconds.
Before Tshiebwe gave Kentucky the lead — and not long after Wallace went down — Vanderbilt led by as many as 11 points and seemed to have all of the momentum, despite the Commodores losing their best player, 7-footer Liam Robbins, early in the first half.
The Cats cobbled together a comeback as best they could, but they couldn’t finish it off. A victory would have given them their first five-game winning streak of the season. It also would have clinched the 3 seed in next week’s SEC Tournament.
Now, the results of the next week and a half don’t matter as much as the personnel Kentucky has available when the postseason tournament that really matters begins.
Tshiebwe said UK was put in a “very difficult” spot when Wallace was injured and that Reeves was put in a position where he had to do too much.
“Cason makes a lot of plays that help many people,” Tshiebwe said. “Antonio is not a point guard. That boy is a wing. … We’re gonna need Cason. We’re gonna need Sahvir. They are the people who really make the plays for us.”
Reeves said he’d be ready and willing to take on the point guard duties for the time being, if necessary, but he knows his best basketball comes in other ways.
“The team was worried,” he said of the moment Wallace was hurt. “That’s our point guard. We definitely need him out there. And it was tough — just to see him go down.”
Toppin said he thinks Wallace, who has been battling through injuries for much of this season, will be back on the court as soon as possible. Whenever that might be.
“He’s the toughest guy I know. He’s gonna play through injuries — that’s one thing he’s gonna do. If he’s hurt, if he has nagging pains — he’s going to play through it, because he loves this sport. But he also loves his teammates, and he doesn’t want to let his teammates down.
“He understands the time of the year it is. And understands that we need him in order to win games. So he’s going to fight to get healthy and come back.”
Next game
No. 23 Kentucky at Arkansas
When: 2 p.m. Saturday
TV: CBS-27
Radio: WLAP-AM 630, WBUL-FM 98.1
Records: Kentucky 20-10 (11-6 SEC); Arkansas 19-11 (8-9)
Series: Kentucky leads 33-14
Last meeting: Arkansas won 88-73 on Feb. 7 in Lexington
This story was originally published March 1, 2023 at 11:42 PM.
