Oscar Tshiebwe must "relax," control temper against physical opponents

Kentucky opponents are attacking Oscar Tshiebwe. Saturday at Arkansas he responded and it almost cost the Cats.

Arkansas brought its trademark physicality to the paint, rattling the Kentucky center in the first half. Makhel Mitchell got into an early shoving match with Tshiebwe, who retaliated with an elbow. Mitchell had an over the top response, throwing an ice-pack on a part of his face that didn’t get touched, yet it still could have been a Flagrant II foul that resulted in an ejection for Oscar Tshiebwe.

Here's the Oscar Tshiebwe elbow. pic.twitter.com/plBW3dHWkR

— Rare Rookies #BBN (@rarerookies) March 4, 2023

Instead of an ejection, Oscar received a double technical. Later on he also received a Flagrant I foul. They all played a role in sending him to the sideline with five fouls and more than five minutes on the clock.

“To help my team, I just need to realize sometimes it can get too much,” Oscar Tshiebwe said after the Wildcats’ win. “Sometimes you get mad, I just can’t deal with this anymore; the referee too. They said, ‘Oscar, keep [your head] up.’ The way I responded was not good. I need to do better to help my team. I cannot get angry at the beginning the game like that. When you start getting fouled, fouled, fouled, it started affecting me to play aggressive to help my team, so I gotta relax.”

John Calipari did not single out his big man in his postgame comments to Tom Leach, but this unnamed player sounds like it could very well have been referring to Oscar Tshiebwe.

“Today I told one guy, ‘Sometimes you gotta let the guy be wrong. He’s wrong. Don’t argue with them.’ Say, ‘alright, that’s fine.’ It’s okay to let him be wrong. And don’t respond,” said Calipari.

Oscar responded with an elbow and a bunch of rebounds. He tallied another double-double (12 points, 13 rebounds), his 18th of the season. Not only did he learn a lesson or two in the win, Kentucky passed a test that will prepare them for the postseason.

“This game prepared us for what is coming in the SEC Tournament,” said Tshiebwe. “We are fighting, we are fighting for our life right now. This is a team that is going to fight until the end is going to win the game. This game was good for us to prepare us for the Tournament.”