John Calipari doesn't expect Shaedon Sharpe to play this year: "He's a ways away"

Shaedon Sharpe is in Lexington and has begun working out as a member of the Kentucky basketball team. Arriving on campus this week, the nation’s No. 1 prospect has moved into his dorm, enrolled in classes and is now eligible to play when the spring semester begins this week.

Will he play, though? That remains to be seen.

No plan in place to play

As things stand today, the freshman guard has been limited to individual workouts and conditioning with athletic trainers. The raw, natural talent may be clear as day, but John Calipari says he’s nowhere near ready to play in a live game setting at the collegiate level.

That may have to wait until next season.

“He’s a ways away from playing games,” Calipari said Friday. “It may be a year from now. They all know, I talked to him, I said, ‘We don’t have a plan for him to play this year.’ Maybe he does, but that is not the plan and never has been. I never said it because I wanted everybody to go crazy, all the other places where they may have. The reality of it is, we’ve never had a plan.”

Never say never (but probably never)

As we’ve seen with the roster already this season, things can change, and they can do so quickly. With injury and illness whipping through the roster already, it doesn’t hurt to have a break-in-case-of-emergency option on your bench, especially one that was rated as the No. 1 recruit out of high school.

The goal, though, is to avoid that emergency scenario.

“If you asked me right now, my guess is he won’t play, but you don’t know what happens,” Calipari said. “I mean, we’ve had injury after injury. This happened, that happened, we’re down to six, seven guys. I may tell him, ‘Look man, you’ve got to go in seven minutes a game, you’ve got to play some.’ But my hope is we’re never there.”

Getting Sharpe in game shape

What about in blowout situations, getting his feet wet in a live game setting with zero impact on the final score? A few minutes here and there?

“Not if he’s not ready,” Calipari said. “If I don’t think he’s ready to be put in a game, I’m not gonna do that to him.”

It starts with getting in game shape, something “he’s not even close to” yet. And then it’s about building good habits and learning the pace of the game, something Calipari says is still a work in progress with the players that have been here for months and even years.

“I’m trying to protect all these kids and I kind of explained that to him in my vision for ‘how you need to play,'” Calipari said. “In most cases, it’s, ‘I want you to be aggressive. I want you to do what you do best, but I also want to protect you.’ And so with him, you’ve got to get in unbelievable shape. He’s not even close to that. You got to be able to play fast, yet still be skilled. ‘This isn’t my pace.’

“I’m still working on freshmen that have been here (since) the summer, the fall, months and they’re still not playing it. I’m still working on a couple of guys that have been here three years that — ‘You got to play with more intensity, more fight. You have to fly — you can’t run at your speed, run faster than you think you can run.’ It takes time to create a new habit, it’s hard.

“I’m not going to put him in a situation where he’s not ready to go in.”

Early tweaks

Sharpe has been on campus less than a week, and Calipari has already found a bad habit he’d like to fix. Known as a high-flying athlete with second-to-none leaping ability, the UK head coach noticed minimal elevation on Sharpe’s jump shot, specifically on his misses.

It’s all part of the learning curve that comes with transitioning from high school to college.

“Yesterday I had him jump and touch the rim with his head, which he did,” Calipari said. “Then we watched him shoot, and he jumped that high. ‘Wait a minute, you put your head on the rim and you jump this high for jump shots? What are you talking about?’ We ran, he didn’t make any shots. I said, ‘Listen kid, you don’t have to make them all, you just can’t miss them all.’ It’s the first day, this stuff is all new.”

He’ll also need to learn to speak up and be a vocal leader on the floor, something he hasn’t needed to do up to this point in his basketball career.

“He just has to be blended and be a teammate,” Calipari said. “That means you’ve got to be around the guys, you’ve got to be there, you’ve got to talk. Shaedon is not a guy that says a lot. You can do that, but the only way you create relationships is you speak, you listen, you talk. He’ll have to do that.”

Teammates stepping up to help

Sharpe’s new teammates are looking to guide him in the right direction and help clear some of those early hurdles. They may not have been in his same unique shoes as a mid-year enrollee and No. 1 overall recruit, but they’ve all been freshmen.

“I’m just letting him know that we are going through the things he went through,” Keion Brooks Jr. said. “Not to the extent of coming in (during the) season, but coming in as a freshman, being part of a new team, trying to figure out and know where you fit in, what’s your way. He’s actually my roommate, my suitemate. I tell him anytime he has a question or needs something answered, I’ll be there to help as best I can.”

“I’m proud, glad to see him,” Oscar Tshiebwe added. “I cannot wait to see what he brings to help us. … You just always help, you know? Always help.”

A clear talent in Sharpe

Short-term plans may be up in the air, but his long-term goals are clear. Sharpe was the crown jewel of Kentucky’s 2022 recruiting class before he enrolled early, and sky-high expectations remain.

What can he be once he knocks off his freshman rust?

“I watched him work out a couple of times,” Brooks said. “As we all know, he’s a really good player, he’s gonna be really good.”

Tshiebwe isn’t convinced Sharpe doesn’t play anyway. If the five-star signee can help the team immediately, he’s for it.

“Coach says he might put him in the game — he brings a lot of good things,” Tshiebwe. “We have to expect it. For me, he’s working — if he can help us, he can help us. You cannot say no to anything that can help you. I’m glad to see him.”

Regardless of excitement within and surrounding the program regarding Sharpe’s arrival, Calipari is taking it one day at a time. No matter the ranking or hype, he’s been here less than a week and there’s work to be done — plenty of it, at that.

“When we start going and he’s going live — he’s not even going live yet — that’s when we’ll figure some more stuff out,” Calipari said. “Right now, I want him to get acclimated.”

The wait-and-see game begins now.