Tshiebwe Sparks Wildcats to 69-59 Win Over Yale
By Jamie H. Vaught
Oscar Tshiebwe was definitely the "Big Man on Campus" Saturday afternoon.
After 16th-ranked Kentucky fell behind 35-33 after Yale’s 8-0 run in the early minutes of the second half, the 6-foot-9 Tshiebwe took charge and sparked the Cats with 22 second-half points in leading UK to a 69-59 victory over a scrappy Yale team. He hit 12 straight points to turn a 35-33 deficit into a 45-40 lead.
Tshiebwe finished with a stunning 28-point, 12-rebound performance, his fifth double-double of the season.
“Our team needed that,” said Tshiebwe of his performance. “I told them to give me the ball and if they double-team me, I will kick it out and if they do not double me on the floor, I do not think there are many people who can stop me, so our team threw me the ball.”
Tshiebwe also logged in the most minutes of any Kentucky player with 38 minutes, just ahead of freshman Cason Wallace (35) and senior Sahvir Wheeler (34).
Commented UK coach John Calipari, “I thought I played Oscar way too many minutes. But Ugo (Onyenso) got two or three balls ripped from him. You’re going to coach to win the game.
“Ugonna kind of got pushed around in that game. I was surprised, to be honest with you, but he did.”
After missing two games at the beginning of the season, Tshiebwe said he is now close 100 percent as far as playing condition.
“I think I jumped up to 95 percent,” said the reigning unanimous National Player of the Year who had a knee surgery. “We are just working, and it takes a lot of time. I had never had an injury before, and I had never thought about my knee too much, but now I do think about it.”
Kentucky senior Antonio Reeves finished with 10 points, his sixth straight double figure game, while Wheeler had 10 points, four rebounds and an assist. Senior Jacob Toppin had a game-high four assists to go along with four points and five rebounds.
The 7-2 Wildcats, who have struggled with free throw shooting, made 7 of 10 from the line for 70 percent. As for field goal shooting, UK hit 29 of 58 shots for 50 percent as compared to Yale’s 43.1 percent.
After completing the Final Exams this week, Kentucky travels to New York City to meet No. 19 UCLA Saturday in the CBS Sports Classic at Madison Square Garden. The UK game will be played as the second half of the doubleheader and tip off approximately 5:15 p.m. ET.
“They got three days off because we’ve been traveling all over the world. I can say that literally,” Calipari said of his players. “They’ve got the rest of today off. They got Sunday off and they got Monday off. They’re preparing for finals. We’ll practice in a two-hour slot every day probably at 1 or 1:30 every day so you get your work in, then go do finals. We leave on Thursday, after finals, to go to New York. We’ll be there Thursday, Friday, Saturday. We’ll come back here. I think we have another game (on Wednesday, Dec. 21 against Florida A&M), then they go home for Christmas for four days.”
Jamie H. Vaught, a longtime sports columnist in Kentucky, is the author of six books about UK
basketball, including newly-released “Forever Crazy About the Cats: An Improbable Journey of
a Kentucky Sportswriter Overcoming Adversity.” He is also the editor and founder of
KySportsStyle.com Magazine, and a professor at Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical
College in Middlesboro. You can follow him on Twitter @KySportsStyle or reach him via email
at KySportsStyle@gmail.com.
