This time last year BBN was in love. We had fallen for the rebounds, the effort, and the personality of Oscar Tshiebwe. In my opinion it had not been since Tyler Ulis that a player had been that universally embraced by BBN, he was one of us and things felt great. Even as the season derailed through injuries and ended with the most embarrassing tournament loss of the Cal Era, Oscar’s beloved status remained, and the announcement of his return came with joy. Fans were quick to move on from the St. Peters debacle and Shaedon Sharpe fiasco and dreamt of competing for a national championship.
That hasn’t happened. As of February 8th, Kentucky sits firmly on the bubble at 16-8 and 7-4 in the SEC while opposing coaches have openly bragged about taking advantage of the returning NPOY and the last two games have seen Oscar’s production crater. What has happened and can it be fixed?
First off, let’s look at the numbers.
Oscar is averaging 15.5 points and 13.3 rebounds this year, that is still really good, but it is down from 17.4 and 15.2 last season. Even more worrying is that in conference play this season Oscar is averaging 14.9 points but just 8.4 rebounds. We all know raw numbers can be deceiving but the advanced numbers tell a similar story. Oscar’s TRB% (total number of rebounds a player grabbed while on the floor) was an otherworldly 27.2% last season and has dipped to 23.7% which is still very good. His usage rate has also gone down so that is part of the dip in points scored but eFG% has dropped to .553 from the really impressive .606 from last season.
So is Oscar a worse offensive player?
No, I don’t think so, in fact I think Oscar is just as good and probably even a little more skilled but teams are playing him differently on the defensive end. He’s getting more doubles and he’s having multiple bodies thrown at him when the ball is in the air to keep him off the glass (several times in that Florida game Castleton face-guarded Oscar several times to keep him off the glass). Oscar is adjusting as his AST% is up and he’s drawing more fouls (and after a rough start to the year he’s back to hitting almost 70% from the FT line), so while the production is down I don’t think that end of the floor is the issue.
Now we get to the defense.
Multiple SEC coaches have come out and publicly bragged about abusing Oscar on the defensive end but quite frankly it’s not just Oscar. Last season Kentucky’s defense wasn’t great (36 AdjD on Kenpom) but has absolutely cratered this season and sits 89th as of February 8th, which would be the worst of the Cal era as only the 2013 team was anywhere close at 88. So what has happened? Oscar was put in ball screens last year and it wasn’t this bad so what changed? He was never an explosive athlete, and he doesn’t have the length, nor does he have the defensive instincts to make up for that. This year he has not been helped by our guards routinely getting caught up in screens (usually caught trying to go over the screen which puts Oscar in an even worse spot). In short, our entire team has a defensive problem. We have a couple of good 1v1 defenders (and even Oscar isn’t awful when matched with a big due to his strength) but several truly awful team defenders. They get lost on screens, don’t rotate, don’t make the right reads, and we don’t have the length to clean those mistakes up at the rim (also why Cal is hesitant to run a zone because bad team defenders get absolutely exposed in a zone, he tried it last night and it gave up open looks and we couldn’t rebound out of it). There is no doubt Oscar has struggled but it’s not just him, he had the same flaws last year but guys like Grady/Mintz/TyTy/Brooks were all better team defenders than what we currently have (until three of them were riddled with injuries late in the year) and were probably under-appreciated by fans.
So can it be fixed?
This is the real challenge for Cal (and why he’s paid $9m and I’m…not) because I am not sure it can be. Benching Oscar for a resurgent Daimion (seriously cool to see that kid have a positive impact) to add more length can help defensively (it did last night against Arkansas where it appeared the length of the Razorbacks really got in Oscar’s head) but it will have other impacts on the offensive end where Oscar has been a plus. Cal admitted last night that he stuck with Oscar trying to “get him going”, personally I don’t love the message that sends to guys like Daimion who were playing well but I also understand it. This team is flawed and that isn’t going to change, it needs what Oscar provides. Offensive rebounds are crucial to Kentucky having a near top 20 offense according to Kenpom and while Daimion deserves more minutes (and I’d love to see some Ugo at some point) this team needs Oscar’s strengths and it needs him to be in the right headspace.
I’ve seen a lot of Oscar slander about “effort” and even hints at other issues (and as self-proclaimed body language expert thing don’t look great) but from what I’ve seen on the court Oscar is basically the same player he was last year. The team around him didn’t get better and can’t hide the limitations.
