Is he the man to lead this young Kentucky basketball team? ‘I bring a voice of reason.’
Yes, he was new to the program. And, sure, he didn’t have much time to make a decision. The whole summer transfer thing had been a whirlwind, even though he’d done it twice before.
All of that was true.
Yet, Tre Mitchell knew exactly what he was walking into when he signed up to be a basketball player for the Kentucky Wildcats. That label alone comes with plenty of responsibilities. Just about every UK player has lofty objectives on the court, outsized expectations from fans, and a place in the bright and shining fishbowl of the Kentucky basketball world.
Mitchell stepped into all of that when he committed to the Cats in late June. And he took that step with the full knowledge that even more would be asked of him in his final season of college basketball.
The oldest scholarship player on a team filled with teenagers — Mitchell turned 23 last month — he was also signing up to lead.
“That’s something I knew from the jump,” Mitchell said. “I knew it was going to be something that I had to take on, because these dudes don’t have the college experience that I have. I’ve been in the game. I’ve been around. I’ve been to multiple conferences. I’ve seen it all. Just being able to bring that knowledge to them — it’s a weapon for them. At any point, they can pick my brain. Or if I see them struggling with something, I’m going to talk to them about it. And I’m going to help them see a lot of things. Because in the college game, there’s a lot of attention to detail that sometimes it’s easy to overlook. And me being able to give them the little tips and tricks, and have them respond to it and apply it? You see the big jump in what they’re doing, and it’s like the mistakes they’re making are immediately eliminated.”
Last year’s Kentucky roster was stacked with veterans. Six of the team’s scholarship players were upperclassmen. Five of them had at least a year of experience with coach John Calipari.
This team? Two upperclassmen: Mitchell and returning guard Antonio Reeves, who was the new old guy in town a season ago, a soft-spoken transfer after three years at Illinois State.
Reeves has acknowledged that it took time for him to find his comfort zone here last season. He’s also admitted that he’s not the most vocal of guys, though he says he’s working on it, knowing how young this team is — the other 10 scholarship players include eight freshmen, two sophomores — and how they’ll need all the veteran guidance they can get.
Mitchell is a different personality. Like Reeves, he’s not really the in-your-face type. But he also seems to have come to Lexington looking to lead right off the bat.
He committed to the Wildcats on June 26, just 10 days after his former coach, Bob Huggins, was arrested for driving under the influence, leading to his removal at West Virginia, where Mitchell had planned to play the 2023-24 season. Within 24 hours of entering his name in the transfer portal, Mitchell was on UK’s campus for a visit. A couple of days later, he was a Wildcat.
Mitchell spent those first few days getting the lay of the land in Lexington, literally and figuratively. He observed his young teammates. He conversed with Calipari. He looked for where he could contribute best, on and off the court.
A couple of weeks after his arrival, he accompanied the team to Canada for the GLOBL JAM exhibition tournament, something they’d been training for before he even entered the portal.
Mitchell came home from that trip having led the team in several categories, including minutes played. He’d done it all while playing out of position — a stretch 4 forced to play the 5 — and with very little time to prep.
“I’ve always looked at myself as a guy that can do whatever you need me to do,” Mitchell said. “Whether you want to play me at the 5, 4, whatever you want to do. I’ll get out there and I’ll do what you need me to do. That’s just how I see the game and that’s how I’ve always seen the game. I look at myself as a plug-and-play guy that can literally just do anything out there on the court.”
He’s become an invaluable part of Calipari’s 2023-24 plans. And that plug-and-play ability is also proving useful as a leader of young men.
‘Voice’ of the Wildcats
It apparently didn’t take long for the younger Cats to gravitate toward Mitchell, who has 1,398 points, 597 rebounds and 92 starts in 102 games at the Division I level over the past four years. His previous stops include UMass, Texas and West Virginia, and he’s played a key role at each school. Eight of his teammates have never appeared in a college basketball game.
“I would say they definitely see me as a voice, because they know that I’ve been through it,” Mitchell said. “They know that I’ve seen it all. At first, I wasn’t as vocal. Because the type of leader I am — I need to get to know people first. Because how you approach someone determines how they respond. And you have to figure out people’s personalities. You have to figure out what works well for them. Some dudes you can scream at and know they’re like, ‘OK. Let’s go.’ Other dudes you gotta pull to the side and you gotta break things down and make things make sense for them. So just being a leader in that aspect, and being able to get through to people — I think that they definitely see that in me. And they listen. They do.”
Freshman guard D.J. Wagner — long thought to be the most promising player in his 2023 class — certainly learned to listen early on. Wagner is vocal. He’s confident. He wants to lead, and he has the type of game that can back up big talk. But the 18-year-old can listen, too.
“He brought a lot to the table,” Wagner said of Mitchell. “He’s a veteran, so he’s a lot more mature when it comes to playing basketball. He knows a lot of stuff. Just having that vet there — just showing us different things … And he’s a great player. He can do a little bit of everything. So he’s definitely been helping us out a lot. He plays a big factor.”
Asked if Mitchell was someone to look up to as Wagner tries to emerge as a leader himself, the freshman guard didn’t hesitate. “Most definitely,” he shot back, explaining that he’ll lean on the veteran for advice during and after practices.
Mitchell sees a bright bunch with bright futures. That eight-player class features five newcomers that have been ranked as five-star recruits. Wagner and Justin Edwards are potential lottery picks in next year’s NBA Draft. (Some have Edwards at No. 1). Aaron Bradshaw has also been projected in that range. They’ll get the biggest share of the spotlight this season. And that’s OK.
“This is a group of guys who are unbelievably talented,” Mitchell said. “The only thing is their inexperience at the college level. And I bring that to the table. I bring a voice of reason. A voice of understanding to them — that whatever they may hate in that moment, when things get a little dicey and their mind starts to wander off — I can be right there to bring ’em back in.
“That’s just a role that I began to take on, and I guess I really kind of took it on as soon as I stepped on campus. Just trying to be that voice for them. To make things easier for them.”
The Calipari whisperer?
Part of Mitchell’s role with this Kentucky team appears to be as mediator to the guy in charge.
Coaching a bunch of teenagers with that perennial UK basketball expectation — a national championship — in mind isn’t the easiest of tasks, no matter how much experience Calipari has with young players. It never hurts to have an older guy or two to translate.
“He’s a vet. He’s like that,” Calipari said, making a flat-line motion with his hand. “So he calms them down, but the biggest thing is he is one of those guys that makes everybody better, because of how he plays and who he is. … And he’s been a great leader.”
When asked if part of his job is figuring out Calipari, so he can be that link between the 64-year-old coach and the teenagers he hopes to lead to a national title, Mitchell smiled.
“I’m definitely like a little mediator or translator or whatever you want to call it,” he said. “Because, you know, coaches yell. And some dudes take that yelling personal. When it doesn’t need to be that way. Or sometimes he may yell at them for something that they didn’t understand at the time or that maybe he’s yelling about something that he didn’t really see.”
Mitchell’s in a spot now where he can talk to both sides of any potential conflict. And both sides will actually listen and try to understand. Calipari seems to appreciate it.
“Sometimes it’s — like he says, ‘They’re so young. … Some of their stuff, I can’t remember when I was 18 having to go through this stuff.’ But he’s been great, and they love playing with him because he makes the game easy for them,” he said.
With UK’s trio of 7-footers — Ugonna Onyenso, Aaron Bradshaw and Zvonimir Ivisic — all sidelined for the moment and light on experience, Mitchell is likely to start the season as the Wildcats’ center. Depending on what happens with the other bigs, he might need to play that role for more than just the first few games.
Listed at 6-9 and 231 pounds, he knows he’ll face guys who are taller, bigger and stronger. He acknowledges that he might not be able to keep up on the boards against such players, but he’s also looking at some positives that could come from that.
“The advantage with me at the 5 is the versatility that I bring to the table, because there’s not many 5s that have super quick feet or are able to guard a pick-and-pop, a pick and a short roll,” he said. “And just constantly having to adjust to different schemes that are thrown at them.”
There will surely be some bumps in the road. The early part of the schedule features games against two All-America centers — Hunter Dickinson of Kansas and Armando Bacot of North Carolina — and the SEC slate will bring weekly challenges, even if UK’s other bigs are back.
Mitchell will just have to adjust as best he can. He’s certainly seen plenty in his college basketball journey. He was a star right off the bat at UMass, where he spent two seasons. He went to Texas — in search of a bigger stage — and started 17 of 24 games there, but he said he wanted to get closer to his Pittsburgh-area home for family reasons, and he ended up playing a crucial role for Huggins — another Hall of Fame coach — at West Virginia.
And now he’s a college graduate and playing at Kentucky. One more season ahead of him. The biggest stage of all. Asked a question about facing the “pressures” that come along with being a UK basketball player, Mitchell flipped the narrative.
“It’s an unbelievable opportunity, if you ask me,” he said. “Kentucky’s program speaks for itself. And it always has. And to be a part of it is something special. And I definitely don’t take it for granted. I enjoy it every single day. But the way that I see it is I’m not trying to live up to someone else’s expectation.
“It’s more so me trying to be the best version of myself every single day.”
