Injuries to Kentucky's backcourt placing larger load on starting five

As injuries pile up for Kentucky men’s basketball, the heavy load of minutes for those on the court continues to grow.

During the Wildcats’ 71-68 win over Mississippi State on Wednesday, all five starters played at least 32 minutes. Cason Wallace and Antonio Reeves, who are handling the bulk of the backcourt duties while Sahvir Wheeler and CJ Fredrick recover from injury, both logged 38 minutes in the victory and could have gone the full 40 if needed. Jacob Toppin saw the floor for 37 minutes of his own while both Chris Livingston and Oscar Tshiebwe clocked 32 minutes each. No other Wildcat played more than nine minutes.

The extra minutes ultimately didn’t impact Kentucky’s ability to beat the Bulldogs earlier this week, but it could be something to monitor down the stretch of the regular season. Until Wheeler and Fredrick (two guys averaging 28.0 and 27.4 minutes per game during SEC play, respectively) return to the floor, head coach John Calipari is going to have to lean even more on his core group.

“Playing that many minutes is a tough thing to do sometimes,” Reeves told reporters on Friday ahead of Saturday’s showdown against No. 10 Tennessee.

“There’s a lot of self-talk going on, telling myself you gotta fight through it, you gotta keep going,” Wallace added.

Over the last three games, in particular, Kentucky’s starting five is soaking up the vast majority of the minutes. Of Wallace, Reeves, Livingston, Toppin, and Tshiebwe, the only instance in which one of them didn’t play at least 30 minutes in the last three outings was when Wallace played *just* 28 in the loss to Georgia where he was dealing with foul trouble. Otherwise, those five are all playing a significant chunk of UK’s minutes. Reeves even played all 40 minutes against Georgia.

“We’ve got to get healthy without CJ and Sahvir, we’re on fumes a little bit at the end of a game because I’m playing guys too many minutes,” Calipari said after the win over MSU. “But I called a timeout at one point with what 12:08? You understand I did that to… We just had to get a break for Cason or I had to take him out and I didn’t want to take him out.”

At this stage in the season, these five have established themselves as Kentucky’s most reliable players, especially Livingston, who has come along quite nicely over the last 10 days. They provide Calipari with the best opportunity to win and have enough games under their belt to know what it takes. That doesn’t mean playing this many minutes is any easier, though.

Wallace has been dealing with back spams all season long and was cramping down in Starkville, which prevented him from playing the extra two minutes against Mississippi State to make it a full 40. Due to the abnormally high temperature radiating throughout Humphrey Coliseum, Wallace said he sweated more in that contest than he had all season long.

Elsewhere, Toppin is constantly dealing with minor injuries that are little fault to his own — twisted ankles, elbows to the chest, etc. Tshiebwe missed the first two games of the season due to a preseason knee surgery that slowed him down early in the schedule, but he currently ranks fourth in the SEC in percentage of minutes played, per KenPom, while Toppin ranks 17th.

At this stage in the season, everyone is tired all across the country. But injuries are exaggerating the issue for Kentucky. There are players such as Adou Thiero, Lance Ware, and Daimion Collins who are capable of coming in and making an impact, but they’re best served in short spurts.

A quick turnaround from Wednesday night on the road (SEC games are typically played on Tuesday) to ramping up again on Saturday afternoon certainly doesn’t help, either. Calipari has given players the option to substitute themselves out of the game, but with so few options waiting in relief, it has to be a quick rest.

But again, everyone is running low on fuel as we inch closer to tournament time. When Tennessee comes to town on Saturday, they’ll do so without two key rotational players of their own due to injury. The team that comes out ahead will likely be the one that dug just that much deeper than the loser. Kentucky was able to do just that against Mississippi State. Can they repeat against the Volunteers?