Five things you need to know from Kentucky’s 86-54 obliteration of Auburn
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Game day: Kentucky 86, Auburn 54
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader’s and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Saturday’s men’s basketball game between Kentucky and Auburn in Rupp Arena.
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Five things you need to know from Kentucky’s 86-54 obliteration of Auburn at Rupp Arena at Central Bank Center:
1. Oscar is back, baby. After a season when much of the narrative has focused on how Kentucky star Oscar Tshiebwe has not played to the level he did when earning consensus national player of the year honors in 2021-22, the UK big man turned in a scintillating week.
Against Auburn, Tshiebwe produced the 44th points-rebounds double-double of his 61-game UK career, finishing with 22 points and 17 rebounds.
The performance followed Tshiebwe’s 25-point effort in UK’s 82-74 win at Florida on Wednesday night.
Tshiebwe made eight of 10 shots vs. Auburn, and has now connected on 20 of 23 field-goal tries over the past two games.
After Tshiebwe’s preseason was sidetracked when he missed four weeks following a surgical procedure on a knee, the product of the Democratic Republic of Congo has looked an awful lot like “2021-22 Oscar” this past week.
In his two-season UK career, the 6-foot-9, 255-pound Tshiebwe now has 1,032 points and 861 rebounds.
On the all-time Kentucky scoring list, Tshiebwe on Saturday passed No. 58 Ron Mercer (1,013 career points), No. 57 Doron Lamb (1,018) and No. 56 Bob Burrow (1,023). Next ahead for the UK star is No. 55 Jim Line (1,041).
As for the all-time Kentucky rebounding chart, Tshiebwe is chasing seventh-place Chuck Hayes (910 career boards).
2. Toppin has quietly become a force. A good bit of the reason for Kentucky’s late-season rise can be traced to the play of senior power forward Jacob Toppin.
Before fouling out with 4:06 left in the Saturday’s game, Toppin hung 13 points, 12 rebounds and five assists on Auburn.
The 6-9, 205-pound Brooklyn, N.Y., product produced back-to-back double-doubles this week, after having 19 points and 11 boards in the road win at Florida.
Toppin now has 12 straight games scoring in double figures — and has begun to play like the guy, who, back in the summer, was being forecast to be Kentucky’s “breakout player” in 2022-23.
3. Cason Wallace’s outside shot. The Kentucky point guard entered Saturday’s game mired in a 1-for-19 three-point shooting drought over the past five games, including 0-for-16 in the past four contests.
It took the 6-4, 193-pound Dallas product only 4:22 of elapsed playing time Saturday to get the lid off the bucket from behind the arc. Wallace arced in a three-pointer from the left wing off a pass from Chris Livingston in transition with 15:38 left in the first half.
Wallace went on to hit six of 12 shots, both his three-point attempts and five of six free throws en route to a strong all-around showing vs. Auburn — 19 points, three rebounds, nine assists and four steals.
With veteran UK guards Sahvir Wheeler (ankle) and CJ Fredrick (ribs) having been sidelined by injuries, one can’t help but wonder if Wallace’s prior shooting issues have had to do with leg fatigue. Going into the Auburn contest, Wallace had logged 39, 28, 38, 39 and 38 minutes in the five games of his outside-shooting funk.
On Saturday, Fredrick returned to action and played seven minutes. Yet even in a blowout, Wallace still played 37 minutes.
Among the main reasons UK needs to get Wheeler back is to be able to get Wallace some in-game time off his feet.
4. Homecoming game. Auburn brought not one but two ex-Kentucky college basketball stars back to the commonwealth.
In two seasons, big man Johni Broome led Morehead State to the OVC Tournament finals in back-to-back seasons in 2020-21 and 2021-22 and to a berth in the 2021 NCAA Tournament.
The 6-10, 235-pound product of Plant City, Fla., came to Rupp Arena averaging 13.8 points, 9.0 rebounds and 1.9 blocks in his first year playing for Bruce Pearl at Auburn.
In Saturday’s high-profile big-man battle with Kentucky’s Oscar Tshiebwe, Broome came up on the short end. He finished with 12 points and one rebound in 26 minutes and finished with a team-worst minus-36 in the plus/minus stat.
During what became a one-and-done year at Eastern Kentucky in 2020-21, point guard Wendell Green starred as the Colonels went 22-7.
In his second season playing for Auburn, the 5-11, 170-pound Detroit product came to Lexington averaging 13.9 points, 3.5 rebounds, 4.3 assists and 1.8 steals but shooting only 42.6 percent on field goals and 28.2 percent on three-point tries.
Green had 11 points and five assists in Auburn’s 80-71 home-court victory over Kentucky last season, but struggled in his first game in Rupp Arena. Green finished with nine points, two rebounds, two assists and a steal after making only three of 12 shots, one of four three-point tries.
5. UK’s NCAA Tournament profile. Auburn entered Saturday’s contest rated No. 33 in the NET rankings. UK needed the Tigers to be in the top 30 of the NET for the contest to count as a Quad 1 win for the home-standing Wildcats.
Nevertheless, Kentucky gained its sixth Quad 2 win of the season without a loss. Combined with UK’s 5-7 mark in Quad 1 games, that makes the Cats 11-7 in Quad 1 and 2 games.
Even with the Quad 3 loss at Georgia (No. 140 in the NET) and the horrid Quad 4 home defeat to South Carolina (No. 240), Kentucky (20-9, 11-5 SEC) should now be very close to locked into the NCAA Tournament regardless of how the Wildcats fare the rest of the way — which includes a Quad 3 home game with Vanderbilt (No. 91 in the NET), a Quad 1 road contest at Arkansas (No. 15) and the SEC Tournament.
In the span of two weeks, Kentucky has gone from the NCAA Tournament bubble to a team no one is going to want to see in their bracket.
This story was originally published February 25, 2023 at 6:36 PM.
