Calipari: Rebounding will decide if Kentucky plays a three-guard lineup

The story of the night is Oscar Tshiebwe‘s ridiculous stat line of 37 points and 24 rebounds in Kentucky’s win over Georgia. He was outrageous. A rebound shy of college basketball’s first 35/25 game in over 25 years. He was a monster.

But a close secondary storyline is John Calipari turning to the Basketball Benny lineup to pull away with the win.

After trailing by eight at halftime, Calipari handed the full-time point guard duties over to Cason Wallace, leaving Sahvir Wheeler on the bench for all but one minute in the second half. The move paid off because Kentucky outscored Georgia, 51-29, after halftime in arguably the best half of basketball Kentucky played all season.

With Wallace running point, he played nearly all of the second half with Tshiebwe, Jacob Toppin, and CJ Fredrick, while Antonio Reeves and Chris Livingston split time on the wing in offense/defense roles. When Reeves was in the game, it formed the fan-favorite lineup of Wallace-Fredrick-Reeves-Toppin-Tshiebwe; the same five that beat Tennessee in Knoxville over the weekend when Wheeler was unavailable.

Against Georgia, Calipari turned to that five with 12 minutes to go and the game tied at 55. Eight minutes later, Kentucky was up seven, 72-65, when Livingston subbed in for Reeves to protect the lead.

After the win, Calipari was asked what he saw from that group in the eight-minute stretch they played together in the second half. Calipari replied that a lot of it falls on Toppin to make it work.

He said, “The only thing I worried about was defensively, and that means you’re putting a lot of weight on Jacob to rebound. He did it, so you can play with three guards. If he doesn’t do it, you’ve got to have Chris in there rebounding. You have to.”

Toppin had 11 rebounds against the Bulldogs, a new career high.

Calipari rambled on, “We also need a sub for Jacob. Today it was Lance (Ware). We went to the sub with Ugonna (Onyenso), kind of got muscled a little bit. But why do you think I put him in? Because they were driving for layups. I thought maybe he’ll go block a shot and change the complexion of the game. But I loved the dunk. Adou (Thiero) did great again.

“But the game, whether it was he or Sahvir (Wheeler), the game just dictated to me this is how you’ve got to play this. It’s not brain surgery. We were all watching the same thing.”

More on Toppin’s rebounding

Since Calipari’s only observation from the Wallace-Fredrick-Reeves-Toppin-Tshiebwe lineup is Toppin’s rebounding, we’ll keep our focus there, as Calipari did in his postgame comments.

Later in the press conference, he was asked about the complexion of the team when Toppin crashes the glass like he did against Georgia, to which he replied, “It means you can put a bunch of guards out there if he and Oscar–because Oscar is going to get a bunch of them and he cleans up the rest, but the last game Antonio rebounded, Chris rebounded.”

In summary, fans need Toppin to be a great rebounder if Calipari is going to play the popular Wallace-Fredrick-Reeves-Toppin-Tshiebwe lineup.

There was no word on how Sahvir Wheeler plays into all of this, though.