Adou Thiero has a commitment to defense and the weight room

One of the newest members of the Kentucky Basketball program, Adou Thiero arrived on campus in early June as one of the three incoming freshmen on the team. A late-bloomer in his high school class, Thiero didn’t receive his scholarship offer to Kentucky until March of this year, only a few months before he moved into the Lodge.

He was unranked when John Calipari extended the invitation.

Thiero has since made a bigger name for himself as a member of On3’s fifth-best recruiting class but he still doesn’t carry the expectations of UK’s two other freshmen, Cason Wallace and Chris Livingston, two five-star McDonald’s All-Americans. Wallace and Livingston are at Kentucky to make an immediate impact, while Thiero’s path allows slower growth on the court as a reserve player in John Calipari’s system.

But off the court, that growth is already moving quickly.

On Thursday, Thiero confessed he wasn’t an everyday regular in the weight room before he moved across the parking lot from the Joe Craft Center. Now, he has a daily commitment to getting bigger so he can compete at the college level.

“I’m here in the weight room every day,” he admitted to reporters during a summer press conference on campus. “I never lifted (before). I had a week span of lifting every year and then I’d just stop. This is the first time I’m lifting every day so I’m getting a lot stronger.”

Defensive Player of the Year aspirations

When John Calipari recruited Thiero, he saw in him the potential for an All-SEC defensive player.

“He said he wanted me to be a Defensive Player of the Year,” Thiero recalled of Calipari’s pitch. “No other coach said that, so that really caught my eye.”

To Calipari’s point, Thiero has the length to be an excellent ball-stopper and he is still growing. The growth spurt is up to ten inches since Thiero’s freshman year of high school.

But it’s not just the growth plates or the good genes that will make Thiero a defensive standout one day; it’s his commitment to playing defense.

“People don’t really take defense–,” Thiero paused. “They don’t find it as important. They always want to get the people that can score a whole bunch when defense is really important.”

He sees the pride in locking down and telling his opponent, “you’re not going to get past me,” and with that attitude, he can become the excellent defender Calipari saw in a young, unranked prospect in Pennsylvania last spring.

Hear more from Thiero about his first weeks in Lexington.

Summer Q&A with Adou Thiero