Oscar Tshiebwe shares continued progress in recovery from knee surgery

After his impressive performance against Georgia Tuesday night, it appears Kentucky star Oscar Tshiebwe is back to playing at a high level following offseason knee surgery. He feels that way, too.

Tshiebwe had a monster effort in the 85-71 victory with 37 points and 24 rebounds. It was by far his biggest game this season as he looked to build on winning National Player of the Year last season. Tshiebwe is averaging 17.3 points and 13.8 rebounds per game in 2022-23 even despite playing a bit cautious to make sure he didn’t re-injure his knee.

He discussed his recovery after the game and indicated he’s playing without much limitation now.

“I could do more,” Tshiebwe said. “The doctor told me, ‘Don’t do too much because if you don’t want to get something back, you must wait. Just take it slow, slow, slow, slow.’ That was kind of mentally messing me up a little bit because I’ve never had surgery before. So, in my mind, I was saying, ‘It might come back, it might come back. Let me not do that, let me not do this.’

“Now, I just play free.”

John Calipari defends Oscar Tshiebwe calling out teammates

Following Kentucky’s 85-71 win over Georgia, head coach John Calipari defended Wildcats’ star Oscar Tshiebwe for calling out his teammates. Tshiebwe called out teammates after a loss to South Carolina for a lack of “fight” in the team and relayed the message to Calipari.

However, the head coach chalked it up to a language barrier situation and said no one took offense from the intended message. Whatever was said happened to work as Kentucky won two in a row since Tshiebwe called out other Wildcats.

“Now he’s very intelligent,” Calipari said of Tshiebwe. “How many languages (does he speak), like six? English is probably No. 6. He told me to put in a walk-on, he never did that. … So sometimes he’ll do stuff like that. And he’ll feel bad, ‘Well I didn’t know that meant that.’ Yeah, that’s what it means. So you don’t do it. He’s the greatest kid. You saw that he’s such a good kid that that’s what they did, they wanted him to get 50 (points). 

“They couldn’t care less, they want to win the game now. We’re not playing for ourselves. We’re playing for each other now. And I will tell you that everybody was fine with it. You know why? Because they know him.”