A year ago at this time, Kentucky men’s basketball was mired in its worst season since the Great Depression, and all Oscar Tshiebwe could do was watch.
Oh, and talk. He did a lot of talking.
Tshiebwe arrived in Lexington with about six weeks to go in a season Kentucky fans would like nothing more than to forget ever happened. As a transfer who played 10 games early in the year at West Virginia, Tshiebwe wasn’t eligible to play for the remainder of that 9–16 season. But as he watched from the sidelines as the Wildcats floundered through a COVID-19-impacted season, the big man made it known to his teammates that things would be different next year.
“I’m so fast; they can’t mess with me,” Kentucky center Lance Ware recalls Tshiebwe boasting from the sidelines. “They’re going to have to double-team me.”
Ware and his teammates were skeptical at the time. They aren’t anymore.
“He wasn’t lying,” Ware laughs.
All those boasts have come true. Tshiebwe too fast to handle. Teams have to double-team (and sometimes triple-team) him. And even that hasn’t been enough to stop Oscar, whose record-setting rebound totals have him in the mix for National Player of the Year and have elevated Kentucky from the shadows of last season’s disappointment back into a title contender.