Cason Wallace on the No. 1 thing John Calipari wants him to work on

Cason Wallace is the highest-ranked member of Kentucky’s 2022 class, coming in at No. 7 in the On3 Consensus, but a month in Lexington has shown him parts of his game still need some work. In a conversation with reporters yesterday, the 6’3″ combo guard shared some of the feedback he’s received from John Calipari so far.

“He says I’m not a very good lob thrower,” Wallace told KSR. “I feel like if I can throw it up there to Daimion [Collins], that’s all that matters. If I can throw up high enough, put it in the right spot.”

Standing at 6’9″ with a 7’5″ wingspan and 42″ vertical leap, Collins is the perfect lob target, a human pogo stick. The same goes for 6’9″ Jacob Toppin, whose trademark bounciness has been on display for the past two seasons at Kentucky. Even though he vows to improve his passes, Wallace is grateful to have Collins and Toppin there to clean up his mistakes.

“I’m going to get those lobs down. Can’t have a bad assist-to-turnover ratio,” he said. “I have thrown a few bad lobs and they went and got them for me. Pretty good and glad for that.”

In addition to lobs, Wallace is focusing on communicating more on the court, specifically on offense.

“I would say the biggest adjustment would be communicating on both ends of the floor instead of — in high school you’re communicating moreso on defense and offense, you’re just running the plays but here at Kentucky, it’s more of a freestyle offense where you’ve got to tell your teammates what you’re doing, tell them where to go, so that’s been the biggest change for me.”

Wallace willing to do whatever it takes to win

Wallace is listed as a combo guard, but KSR’s Jack Pilgrim shared in his practice report earlier this week that he’ll split point guard duties with Sahvir Wheeler this season in order to showcase his playmaking skills on the ball. Yesterday, Wallace said he’ll do whatever it takes to win, even if it means posting up inside.

“I’ll do whatever we need to do to win. If they need me on the ball, I’ll play on the ball. Off the ball. They need me to post up, I’ll post up.”

Wallace and Wheeler have squared off in practices thus far, which the younger guard says is simply iron sharpening iron.

“He wins some, I lose some. Or I win some, he loses some. But every day we just go in and compete with each other and make each other better. That’s all I can ask for.”

Wallace got a small taste of the Big Blue Nation experience at the Players First ProCamp in Frankfort earlier this week. He told reporters it only made him more excited to play in front of 20,000-plus in Rupp Arena this fall.

“I’m very excited to play in front of the fans. They’ve been showing love ever since high school. I know a few of them came to some of my games so just having fun out there. That’s all.”