Next Cats player page: Kentucky basketball transfer Oscar Tshiebwe
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Next Cats player pages
Bio information, video highlights and the latest rankings for all of Kentucky’s basketball commitments and recruiting targets for the class of 2021 and beyond. These pages include John Calipari’s quotes on the UK signees for next season, as well as the newest Crystal Ball predictions for the Wildcats’ top uncommitted targets.
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Kentucky wasn’t successful in its original recruitment of five-star big man Oscar Tshiebwe, but — after the promising center decided he would look for another school to complete his college career — John Calipari finally landed the coveted frontcourt prospect.
Tshiebwe announced midway through his sophomore season at West Virginia that he would be leaving the Mountaineers program and chose Kentucky as his destination a few days later. He’ll be cleared to play for the Wildcats starting in the 2021-22 season and will have three seasons of NCAA eligibility remaining.
OSCAR TSHIEBWE
- Center | Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of the Congo
- 6-foot-9, 260 pounds
- Previously played for West Virginia
- Averaged 11.2 ppg, 9.3 rpg as college freshman
- No. 31 overall recruit in 2019 class
Tshiebwe was one of the top frontcourt recruits in the 2019 class and emerged as a major Kentucky target — even taking an official visit to Lexington — before ultimately signing with West Virginia, though he said at the time that UK was his second choice.
He got off to a splendid start to his college career, leading the Mountaineers in both scoring and rebounding as a freshman and establishing himself as one of the most physical post players and top offensive rebounders in the country.
Going into his sophomore season, Tshiebwe was ranked by ESPN and CBS as one of the top 15 players in all of college basketball. He got off to a bit of a slow start, however, averaging 8.5 points and 7.8 rebounds in 19.9 minutes per game — all of those numbers slight drops from his freshman campaign — through 10 games before deciding to move on.
Kentucky officially announced Tshiebwe as part of the Wildcats’ program Jan. 14, and he arrived on UK’s campus Feb. 1.
Tshiebwe is likely to be UK’s starting center for the 2021-22 season, and 247Sports analyst Travis Branham told the Herald-Leader that he should pair well with five-star power forward Daimion Collins — the Wildcats’ top-ranked signee for their 2021 class — to make up a formidable frontcourt that should also be bolstered by the return of a few other talented players.
In the meantime, Tshiebwe will be eligible to practice with the current team, and Calipari has said that he hopes the new UK big man can help this season’s Wildcats get better while getting himself acclimated to the coaching staff and life as a Kentucky basketball player.
Quotable
“Oscar makes for a great addition. He’s a bruising, high-motor big man who just battles on the glass and can score in the post. His skill set, over the years, has continued to develop. He’s not overly polished, but his blend of physicality and motor enable him to be a capable post scorer but also a load in the paint, when it comes to battling on the glass and getting those scrap buckets off of misses and cleaning up on the defensive end.” — 247Sports analyst Travis Branham
What Calipari says
“I loved Oscar out of high school. We recruited him. Loved his effort, his intensity, all his fight. I just said, ‘That’s what you’ve got to bring here. The most important thing will be that. You bring all that and we’ll try to help in any way we can. We’ll be about you. You be about these guys. You be about elevating everything around you here.’ So, it was a pretty direct conversation. There was no, ‘You’re going to do this, we’re going to have you do this.’ Basically, none of that. It was about what this culture is about here. We’re excited. I’m excited to have him here.”
This story was originally published February 1, 2021 at 8:55 PM.
