LEXINGTON, Ky. — It seems self-evident that if Kentucky does not have Cason Wallace moving forward, the Wildcats’ season is cooked.
Wallace missed the final 18:09 of UK’s 68-66 Senior Night loss to Vanderbilt on Wednesday night in Rupp Arena after suffering an apparent leg injury. So there must have been a Big Blue Nation-wide sigh of relief when John Calipari said after the game that the early word on the health status of Kentucky’s point guard was encouraging, though it was unclear if Wallace would be available for UK’s 2022-23 regular-season finale Saturday at Arkansas.
“Cason, they X-rayed. He’s fine. It’s not swelled,” Calipari said. “So, we’ll see. I’m hoping that he’ll be OK for Saturday, but I don’t know.”
Kentucky’s other primary ball handler, Sahvir Wheeler, has not played since Feb. 4 due to, first, an ankle injury and, now, what Calipari described Wednesday as an undisclosed medical procedure. As a result, it’s hard not to wonder if a second straight UK season is about to be undermined by the impact of late-season physical maladies in the Wildcats’ backcourt.
As we learned in 2021-22, when UK’s two point guards, Wheeler (hand) and TyTy Washington (lower leg), both missed late-season time due to physical issues, the impact on the team of such absences can be wider than just the injured players.
Last year, while Wheeler and Washington were held out of games against Alabama and LSU to get healthy, UK’s normal “off guards,” Kellan Grady and Davion Mintz, were forced to log 79 and 77 minutes, respectively, of high-stress relief action filling the lead-guard roles.
What happened when the injured guards returned is that neither Washington (a 35.2% shooter over the season’s final six games at 25 of 71) nor Wheeler (a 34.4% shooter in three postseason tournament games, two SEC and one NCAA, at 11 of 32) were the same players as before they were hurt.
But neither Grady (a 32.6% shooter in the season’s final six games at 14 of 43) nor Mintz (35.6% in the last six games at 12 of 34) were the same, either.
One of the primary factors in UK’s shocking 85-79 overtime upset at the hands of No. 15 seed Saint Peter’s in last season’s NCAA Tournament round of 64 was that most of Kentucky’s guards played as if they didn’t have sufficient petrol left in their tanks — Grady shot 1 of 9, Washington 2 of 10, Mintz 3 of 7 and Wheeler 4 of 8 against the Peacocks.
Now, it seems worrisome that a similar dynamic could come into play in 2022-23.
With Wheeler and shooting guard CJ Fredrick (out four games in February due to a rib injury before returning two games ago) having each missed significant time late this season, Wallace and wing Antonio Reeves have both been logging heavy minutes.
Until playing only 20 minutes against Vanderbilt due to his injury, Wallace had been averaging 36.5 minutes a contest over UK’s six prior games — and had played 37 minutes or more in every one of those contests except at Georgia, where he went only 28 minutes due to foul trouble.
Is that high-volume usage impacting Wallace’s jump shot? Over Kentucky’s last seven games, Wallace is 3 of 23 on 3-point attempts. In the Wildcats’ past six games, Wallace has shot 19 of 62.
Meanwhile, over UK’s last seven games, Reeves is averaging 34.6 minutes a game. The Illinois State transfer has made 40% or fewer of his shots in six of Kentucky’s prior eight games, including a 4-of-17, 1-of-8 3-pointers, showing against Vanderbilt.
Some Kentucky backers, perhaps nostalgic for the eras when Rick Pitino or Joe B. Hall could build rosters with quality players stacked from one through 12, have criticized Calipari for not having more backcourt depth.
However, in the current era of the “one free-transfer” rule and the portal, that seems unrealistic. At point guard, Kentucky entered this season with a returning starter (Wheeler), a highly touted incoming freshman (Wallace) and a developmental freshman (Adou Thiero). At shooting guard, UK had two college veterans (Reeves and Iowa transfer Fredrick) joining the roster.
That is about as much viable guard depth as one could realistically hope to accumulate for any season given the realities of how college basketball now functions. If there is a valid criticism of Calipari’s roster construction for 2022-23, Kentucky perhaps should have taken more stock of individual injury histories when filling out its guard corps.
It sounds unlikely that Wheeler is going to be back for Kentucky this season. When asked about the veteran point guard’s status after the Vandy loss, Calipari said, “My guess right now, and what the doctors told me, it’s going to be a couple weeks, or at least that’s what they think.”
For those holding out aspirations that UK (20-10, 11-6 SEC) can salvage what has been a trying season with some March magic, the hope must be that 1.) Cason Wallace is OK; 2.) UK does not again pay the price in the NCAA Tournament for its guards accumulating so many high-stress miles on their tires late in the season.
