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Impact of losing Big Z

K_TIME

K_TIME

All-American
Jan 2, 2003
17,404
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ON court:
We have 80 minutes of PF and Center. I was thinking it would work out
- Mitchell 32 mpg (20 as Center and 12 as PF)
- Bradshaw 28 mpg (20ish as PF and 5 as C)
- Big Z 15-20 mpg as Center mainly
- I imagined Ugonna being out of rotation by January
- Thiero was going to log basically no minutes either by Jan

Now with Big Z out
- Those extra 20 minutes will split between Ugo and THiero depending upon which combination was most effective. I tend to lean towards Bradshaw will play more Center and Thiero will absord more PF minutes. I think our defensive rim protection will suffer and probably shooting will suffer as Thiero is a bad shooter. I jsut think Ugo isn't ready for this outside of rim protection....he is slow reacting, no offense and isn't a strong rebounder which will show up with this roster.

2. Off court:
UK fans will not let this go easy into the night. If we fall to a top 15-25 level team and that potential big man costs us games/seed lines. Mitch will be held to fire by fanbase. Another year that we aren't in the hunt for titles will see fan apathy grow. Cal will run his never ending mouth (with or without reason) and alienate more and more of fanbase. And further fraction of fanbase will occur.
 
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Hard to tell because we have no idea how good the kid will be. The good news is IF healthy we have a deep frontcourt. Bad news is two of our three have already dealt with injuries.

I am a huge Thiero guy so the more time he can play the better IMHO.

The whole situation with Z makes me sick to my stomach. Just ridiculous.
 
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There's no impact, he never existed.

Honestly I'd rather have less bigs as long we don't get injured. I want to see some small ball.
 
Plus, remember:

I hope it happens, but your #1 is the best-case scenario. The optimistic view. Ugo and Bradshaw both suffered injuries. Time will tell whether they both put all the effects of those fully behind them for all or most of the season. Recent history hasn't given us many good precedents in that regard.
 
If Bradshaw and Ugonna are healthy for 90% of the year.. it shouldn't be a huge loss.

If they aren't healthy, or if they get injured, or if one (or both) are struggling.. then losing Ivisic is the type of loss that can be the difference between being a 3-seed and a Sweet16 team or a 1-seed and a Final4 team. And I still might even think that, even if Bradshaw and Ugo are healthy and capable.

If a 7'2' guy is seen as an NBA talent, then he's likely going to have an impact. And having a big time center is the last piece for UK. That size will alter a lot of shots and is the type of size that most of the teams we face, won't have an answer for.
 
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Is Z officially out? Haven’t seen anything yet but this thread reads as if he has officially been ruled out an option.
 
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The worst case scenario is no Ivisic plus Bradshaw and Onyenso aren’t able to play much due to their lingering issues.

That forces Cal to go small ball with Mitchell getting over 30mpg at the 5 and Burks backing him up.

Thiero probably logs 25-30mpg at the 4 with Burks also backing him up.

Cal might slide Edwards to the 4 and go even smaller, so he can get those talented guards on the floor together.

That’s worst case, though.

Got to think at the very least Bradshaw will be able to play. A rotation of Mitchell, Bradshaw, and Thiero at the 4 and 5 could work with Burks getting a few minutes and sliding Edwards to the 4 when necessary.

If Bradshaw and Onyenso are both healthy, we should be okay. Those two plus Mitchell and Thiero gives us a solid 4 man rotation at the 4 and 5 spots.
 
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I've apparently missed something since I'm more focused on the FB season. I thought the BB team was already set to make an F4 run with the group that's coming in. Now I'm seeing all these post about this Z player possibly not coming. In CLIFF notes, why is that so crushing to an F4 run?? Thanks.
 
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*CatinIL* said:
I've apparently missed something since I'm more focused on the FB season. I thought the BB team was already set to make an F4 run with the group that's coming in. Now I'm seeing all these post about this Z player possibly not coming. In CLIFF notes, why is that so crushing to an F4 run?? Thanks.
Click to expand...

It's not crushing at all, although I don't think anyone really though we were going on a final four run regardless with such a young team. A lot of luck will have to go our way.

And on the football side the SEC looks blah for once and UK also looked blah.
 
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We never had him. If he doesn't join the team in shouldn't make a big difference.... Unless, of course, Cal has had him practicing with the team via zoom when he isn't even a student.

What's really silly is that all of this wasn't taken care of in August. The university makes exceptions constantly for those who present way less value to the student body than Ivisic. Someone in the administration is blocking this for political reasons or he'd have been accepted weeks ago. That person or those people should be fired and replaced.

If the administration is too afraid to fire the person screwing this up, there's something else we don't know about that's going on and we'll look bad either way at this point. As a friend used to say, UK could fail a blood test if their life depended on it.
 
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UKWildcats1987 said:
It's not crushing at all, although I don't think anyone really though we were going on a final four run regardless with such a young team. A lot of luck will have to go our way.

And on the football side the SEC looks blah for once and UK also looked blah.
Click to expand...
not crushing..........can't agree with that at all
Seems much more talented than either Bradshaw or Ugo.
Ugo has zero experience and is way behind Z on offense
Bradshaw apparently is going to play forward even tho he has never played outside. Z seems
very comfortable playing outside and inside. Z seems much more aggressive on defense than Bradshaw.
FInally both Ugo & Bradshaw are hurt & who knows if they will recover or even play this year.
Yea, the loss of Z is a major problem
 
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On the flip side, there has been teams that made final 4 and title runs with less.

Our 2011 team didn't have much behind Jorts. Maybe Vargas?

Our 2012 team had AD and Vargas.

2019 UVA had Jack Salt, his only backup was Huff, who was Eloy Vargas level.

2011 UConn had Okwanda and Orlander as their only options above 6'9". They combined for a total of 4.4ppg.

2014 UConn had 3 guys over 6'9", combined, they scored 9ppg.

2015 Duke and 2015 Wisconsin both had 1 good big each and Okafor couldn't play a lick of defense.

2016 Villanova had 1 big guy (Ochefu) and no back up.

2017 uNC had Tony Bradley as their only guy over 6'9" and he only scored 7ppg. They had mostly guards and forwards

2018 Villanova had Spellman (6'8") and Paschall (6'9"). That’s it.

2021 Baylor had a guy at 6'5" as their main 5 man (Vital). They had 6'10" Thamba, but he was an athletic forward, like Bradshaw, he wasn't a center. This team was extremely guard heavy.

2022 KU had McCormack… that's it. He only played 22 mpg.

The moral of the story, you win with guards in todays game. It’s been that way for quite some time now.

We already have more front court depth than all the teams I listed above and I didn’t even bother to go through each final 4 team. Heck, Florida Atlantic didn’t have a beast down low either.

Look what happened to Purdue, they were too focused on Edey that their guards couldn’t beat a 16 seed once Edey was neutralized.

It's a guards game, has been for a while. Put Mitchell and/or Bradshaw out there with 3 or 4 guards and spread the floor.
 
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K_TIME said:
ON court:
We have 80 minutes of PF and Center. I was thinking it would work out
- Mitchell 32 mpg (20 as Center and 12 as PF)
- Bradshaw 28 mpg (20ish as PF and 5 as C)
- Big Z 15-20 mpg as Center mainly
- I imagined Ugonna being out of rotation by January
- Thiero was going to log basically no minutes either by Jan

Now with Big Z out
- Those extra 20 minutes will split between Ugo and THiero depending upon which combination was most effective. I tend to lean towards Bradshaw will play more Center and Thiero will absord more PF minutes. I think our defensive rim protection will suffer and probably shooting will suffer as Thiero is a bad shooter. I jsut think Ugo isn't ready for this outside of rim protection....he is slow reacting, no offense and isn't a strong rebounder which will show up with this roster.

2. Off court:
UK fans will not let this go easy into the night. If we fall to a top 15-25 level team and that potential big man costs us games/seed lines. Mitch will be held to fire by fanbase. Another year that we aren't in the hunt for titles will see fan apathy grow. Cal will run his never ending mouth (with or without reason) and alienate more and more of fanbase. And further fraction of fanbase will occur.
Click to expand...
Obviously a LOT depends on health of players.
But assuming guys are healthy, with Z, I was assuming something more like:
26 Mitchell
20 Onyenso
18 Bradshaw
8 Z
8 Theiro

So without Z, I modify those to:
Mitchell 28
Onyenso 22
Bradshaw 20
Theiro 10

If we are healthy, I don't think it is a big impact. But the big issue is 2 of those 4 currently can't play, so I'm not loving that conditional qualifier ("if we are healthy").

Theiro is our most physical player, with or without Z. And because of that he may be our most effective rebounder, and versatile defender. For those reasons he will play some (think shorter but more skilled Ware). And damn he can get "up".
Onyenso gives us what all of Cal's best teams have had, a shot blocking rim protector. He also showed last year to be a good rebounder, and has some offensive skills (although not an offensive force, but may not be a liability on offense either).
Bradshaw looks awfully weak and thin. I correctly predicted Collins would not play much 2 years ago for that same reason when many on this board were saying he would start and be a OAD lottery pick. I'm not saying Bradshaw is that weak, but he doesn't even look as strong as Onyenso. I see a year from him more like Skal as a FR.
Mitchell is a grown man. So, he along with Theiro will give us some physicality, although he looks to prefer finesse.
 
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kyjeff1 said:
On the flip side, there has been teams that made final 4 and title runs with less.

Our 2011 team didn't have much behind Jorts. Maybe Vargas?

Our 2012 team had AD and Vargas.

2019 UVA had Jack Salt, his only backup was Huff, who was Eloy Vargas level.

2011 UConn had Okwanda and Orlander as their only options above 6'9". They combined for a total of 4.4ppg.

2014 UConn had 3 guys over 6'9", combined, they scored 9ppg.

2015 Duke and 2015 Wisconsin both had 1 good big each and Okafor couldn't play a lick of defense.

2016 Villanova had 1 big guy (Ochefu) and no back up.

2017 uNC had Tony Bradley as their only guy over 6'9" and he only scored 7ppg. They had mostly guards and forwards

2018 Villanova had Spellman (6'8") and Paschall (6'9"). That’s it.

2021 Baylor had a guy at 6'5" as their main 5 man (Vital). They had 6'10" Thamba, but he was an athletic forward, like Bradshaw, he wasn't a center. This team was extremely guard heavy.

2022 KU had McCormack… that's it. He only played 22 mpg.

The moral of the story, you win with guards in todays game. It’s been that way for quite some time now.

We already have more front court depth than all the teams I listed above and I didn’t even bother to go through each final 4 team. Heck, Florida Atlantic didn’t have a beast down low either.

Look what happened to Purdue, they were too focused on Edey that their guards couldn’t beat a 16 seed once Edey was neutralized.

It's a guards game, has been for a while. Put Mitchell and/or Bradshaw out there with 3 or 4 guards and spread the floor.
Click to expand...
Nailed it! Guards win you national titles. Not a fringe bench player/depth guy.
 
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It's rather obvious that ship has sailed. We need to hope that Bradshaw and O are ready to go.
 
kyjeff1 said:
Cal has everyone thinking that rim protection is more important than scoring.

Spread the floor with effective shooting, pressure the ball on defense and use quick guards to drive.
Click to expand...
Gotta be able to score for sure. But it never hurts to have rim protection. Especially if you play a quick team. Good to have a guy back there than can challenge layups.
 
As a person who thinks Bradshaw goes the Sharpe route and doesn’t play, The impact is MASSIVE.
 
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This is only tangentially related to Big Z but I think regardless of whether Z is here or not this year, Thiero is going to be one of our better players and will surprise a lot of people.

I love that kid's potential.
 
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bbncal02 said:
Gotta be able to score for sure. But it never hurts to have rim protection. Especially if you play a quick team. Good to have a guy back there than can challenge layups.
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It kinda does hurt though, unless your 5 can step outside and shoot. The second you put an anchor in the paint, you hurt yourself.

Purdue and UK relied on back to the basket scoring bigs last year and look what happened.

Cal falls in love with his bigs on offense and what happens is, you end up with 4 guys standing around watching a big man try to score.

You can still rebound out of your guard/wing/forward positions, but winning rebounding trophies is not going to win you the big games.

When you look at the biggest games UK has won, how many of those games were won because good guards made great plays (Aaron, Monk, Fox, Wall, Ulis, Quickley, Maxey, Murray, Knight, Lamb and even Teague). UConn got us twice in the FF/title game because their guards killed us. KU was undersized last year, but they smacked us in Rupp… guards and wings beat us again.

Two years ago we were rocking in January, then Tyty got hurt and Wheeler got exposed. Yeah, Oscar got npoty and a rebounding trophy, but we got beat by a 15 seed.

KAT pretty much won that E8 game against ND in 2015, but damn, ND was killing us by spreading the floor for most of that game.

Guards win you titles, relying on bigs, gets you sent home early.
 
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kyjeff1 said:
It kinda does hurt though, unless your 5 can step outside and shoot. The second you put an anchor in the paint, you hurt yourself.

Purdue and UK relied on back to the basket scoring bigs last year and look what happened.

Cal falls in love with his bigs on offense and what happens is, you end up with 4 guys standing around watching a big man try to score.

You can still rebound out of your guard/wing/forward positions, but winning rebounding trophies is not going to win you the big games.

When you look at the biggest games UK has won, how many of those games were won because good guards made great plays (Aaron, Monk, Fox, Wall, Ulis, Quickley, Maxey, Murray, Knight, Lamb and even Teague). UConn got us twice in the FF/title game because their guards killed us. KU was undersized last year, but they smacked us in Rupp… guards and wings beat us again.

Two years ago we were rocking in January, then Tyty got hurt and Wheeler got exposed. Yeah, Oscar got npoty and a rebounding trophy, but we got beat by a 15 seed.

KAT pretty much won that E8 game against ND in 2015, but damn, ND was killing us by spreading the floor for most of that game.

Guards win you titles, relying on bigs, gets you sent home early.
Click to expand...
I'm not saying they have to be an anchor. But we've what happens when we have guys that can shoot but then can't guard a fence post too. Got have SOME defense in the paint.
 
kyjeff1 said:
It kinda does hurt though, unless your 5 can step outside and shoot. The second you put an anchor in the paint, you hurt yourself.

Purdue and UK relied on back to the basket scoring bigs last year and look what happened.

Cal falls in love with his bigs on offense and what happens is, you end up with 4 guys standing around watching a big man try to score.

You can still rebound out of your guard/wing/forward positions, but winning rebounding trophies is not going to win you the big games.

When you look at the biggest games UK has won, how many of those games were won because good guards made great plays (Aaron, Monk, Fox, Wall, Ulis, Quickley, Maxey, Murray, Knight, Lamb and even Teague). UConn got us twice in the FF/title game because their guards killed us. KU was undersized last year, but they smacked us in Rupp… guards and wings beat us again.

Two years ago we were rocking in January, then Tyty got hurt and Wheeler got exposed. Yeah, Oscar got npoty and a rebounding trophy, but we got beat by a 15 seed.

KAT pretty much won that E8 game against ND in 2015, but damn, ND was killing us by spreading the floor for most of that game.

Guards win you titles, relying on bigs, gets you sent home early.
Click to expand...

Yeah I actually like the idea of a smaller team. Bradshaw at the 5 won't be an issue. Ugona will mess up the offensive flow IMO.
 
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bbncal02 said:
I'm not saying they have to be an anchor. But we've what happens when we have guys that can shoot but then can't guard a fence post too. Got have SOME defense in the paint.
Click to expand...
Take a look at the rosters of the teams that have won the title each year since Cal got here. Really the only one with a bigtime shot blocker is our 2012 team. Heck, Baylor 2021 had a 6'5" center (Mark Vital). UVA 2019 had Jack Salt.
KU 2022 had McCormack who only played 21 mpg.
2011 UConn had no shot blockers. 2013 UofL, no shot blockers, 2014 UConn, no shot blockers, 2015 duke had Okafor, that guy played zero defense, 2016 Nova, no shot blockers, 2017 uNC was built with guards and forwards, but no shot blockers. Villanova 2018, no shot blockers.

Cal puts shot blocking over scoring, that might just be one of many reasons he hasn't seen a ff since 2015.
 
UKWildcats1987 said:
Yeah I actually like the idea of a smaller team. Bradshaw at the 5 won't be an issue. Ugona will mess up the offensive flow IMO.
Click to expand...
Just as long as Bradshaw is told he is a 4, because he doesn't want to be a 5.

Basically, Cal needs to scrap his seriously outdated post offense and spread the floor. I will be stunned if he does it.
 
kyjeff1 said:
Just as long as Bradshaw is told he is a 4, because he doesn't want to be a 5.

Basically, Cal needs to scrap his seriously outdated post offense and spread the floor. I will be stunned if he does it.
Click to expand...
He's always played to the talents of the team. He doesn't have a system he fits players into. He plays the players. And he's never once promised playing time or a position to a player. That's the stuff of the internet warriors and the CHC.

You guys are trotting out a non issue with Z just to have something to whine about.
 
UKBB4Ever said:
He's always played to the talents of the team. He doesn't have a system he fits players into. He plays the players. And he's never once promised playing time or a position to a player. That's the stuff of the internet warriors and the CHC.
Click to expand...
I guess you missed the Chris Livingston "Experience".
 
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UKBB4Ever said:
He's always played to the talents of the team. He doesn't have a system he fits players into. He plays the players. And he's never once promised playing time or a position to a player. That's the stuff of the internet warriors and the CHC.

You guys are trotting out a non issue with Z just to have something to whine about.
Click to expand...
Calipari publicly said he would find more minutes for Hopkins and then never did. It's on record.
 
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I think it sucks personally, I thought Z fit our offense scheme way better than Ugonna. Honestly I think Ugonna isn't very good, but I hope he proves me wrong.
 
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