John Calipari teases lineup featuring two 7-footers for next season

The last time John Calipari played two seven-footers on the floor at the same time, it worked out quite well. Karl-Anthony Towns and Willie Cauley-Stein constructed the most formidable and impenetrable frontcourt in all of college basketball during the 2014-15 season. Kentucky had the No. 6 offense and No. 1 defense in the country that year, per KenPom, and won 38 straight games before… Well, you know…

But even during that near-perfect run, the game of basketball was already trending away from playing multiple bigs at the same time. It worked for Kentucky in that instance, but having the future No. 1 overall NBA Draft pick in Towns alongside the SEC’s Defensive Player of the Year/First Team All-American in Cauley-Stein made for a unique tag team down low, the likes of which we might not see again anytime soon at the college level. It also helped that neither player averaged more than 26 minutes per game — Towns at 21.1 and Cauley-Stein at 25.9 — which kept the lineups in flux and allowed Calipari some flexibility with how often he played them together.

Fast forward eight years, and the idea of playing two seven-footers at the same time is going to be met with confusion. Having one out there is still key to making deep postseason runs, but in general, it’s almost necessary to have at least four capable shooters on the floor at the same time.

The closest we have to an ultra-big lineup in today’s game actually features Towns once again, but this time on the Minnesota Timberwolves next to 7-foot-1, three-time Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert. Early returns on that duo haven’t been ideal — Minnesota is 9-10 this season when those two play together — but Towns has been sidelined since November with a calf injury, so the jury is still out on whether or not that formula can be successful in the modern age of basketball.

Could Kentucky be the next team to see if this concept can still work? Calipari is already teasing the possibility of it for next year.

During his final radio call-in show of the 2022-23 season on Monday night, the Wildcats’ head coach pitched the idea of playing two seven-footers at the same time in 2023-24. Those two would be incoming five-star center Aaron Bradshaw and rising sophomore Ugonna Onyenso, who are both seven-footers with differing skill sets. It would certainly help Kentucky protect the rim.

“When you have (shot blockers) the (opposing team’s) shooting percentages go down, so let’s hope that — you know, we may be able to play two seven-footers at one time because they’re both skilled,” Calipari said. “They both can shoot. They can shoot 15-footers, one can shoot threes, so you have two seven-footers that, if you choose, you can play them together.”

John Calipari is talking about the opportunity to play Aaron Bradshaw and Ugonna Onyenso together on the floor together next season

Says Onyenso has “a chance to be special.”

— Jack Pilgrim (@JackPilgrimKSR) March 20, 2023

Bradshaw and Onyenso are absolutely skilled enough to make a potential pairing work. Bradshaw is a versatile seven-footer, capable of handling the ball, knocking down shots from beyond the arc, and defending multiple positions, while Onyenso is a classic rim-protecting seven-footer with impressive natural instincts on that end of the floor. Onyenso showed plenty of potential during his brief stints on the court during this past season.

They aren’t exactly Towns and Cauley-Stein (and it would be unfair to expect them to be), but there is a world where those two work seamlessly together.

The question is whether or not we live in that world. Over the last decade, not many have. Will Bradshaw and Onyenso be able to spread the floor enough to make Kentucky’s offensive spacing work? Two of the incoming freshmen guards, DJ Wagner and Robert Dillingham, work better with a clear lane. Two seven-footers complicate that. Outside shots would be hard to generate.

First and foremost, Bradshaw and Onyenso have to show they can simply play at a high level in college. We have plenty of reasons to believe that will be the case — Bradshaw is a bonafide five-star prospect while the Onyenso hype continues to grow — but both would likely better benefit themselves and the collective team playing as the lone big.

With Kentucky set to participate in another mid-summer event this July, there will be plenty of time to experiment.