Rewarded with eligibility, Zvonimir Ivisic rewards basketball world with unforgettable debut
Forget NBA scouts, I want to know what Disney scriptwriters are thinking right now. Step aside, Rudy Ruettiger. No one cares anymore. There is now a 7-2 Croatian unicorn overcoming injustice to beat the system better known as the NCAA inside Rupp Arena, making history hours removed from earning his stamp of approval to play. 16-game wait, 15 hours away from home — 13 points, five rebounds, three blocks, two assists and two steals in a debut your grandkids will be telling their grandkids about.
Zvonimir Ivisic woke up Saturday morning not knowing he’d be cleared. He walked into shootaround having no clue he’d come out the other side eligible, 100 days on the dot after first arriving on campus. 100 days of illness, injury, speculation, murkiness and uncertainty.
Imagine that emotion.
“We cried,” Ivisic said of receiving the news with John Calipari. “We both cried and then we started jumping, jumping like crazy.”
And that’s just half the story. He showed up to Rupp Arena early for a one-on-one workout with John Welch, a quick ramp-up to prepare for his shot. He’d been practicing, but even Tre Mitchell admitted afterward he wasn’t as involved as the other core rotation players up to that point. It’s like a college football redshirt — you practice, but the game reps go to the guys you know are going to be there at kickoff. The best you can do is keep him ready in break-in-case-of-emergency fashion, then make up for lost time as quickly as possible if and when that call comes.
For Ivisic, that was a matter of hours.
And then his moment came, exactly four minutes into the matchup, Kentucky up 8-7 at the 16:00 mark. He stands up, tosses his warmups to the side and slowly walks to the scorer’s table, the Rupp Arena static growing louder and louder with each step. And then on the other side of the TV timeout, his first official introduction as an active member of the Kentucky basketball roster.
“Checking in for Kentucky, No. 44…”
That could’ve been the end of the story and it would’ve still made for a storybook night. A few sprints up and down the floor, a kiss and royal wave to the crowd, plop right back on the bench? Perfectly acceptable debut.
And then Ivisic took over the basketball world. Blocked shot, behind-the-back assist to Antonio Reeves, then back-to-back-to-back-to-back deep jumpers, all in the first half. 11 points, three boards and a pair of dimes, swats and swipes, eight minutes. He immediately goes viral, trending on the app formerly known as Twitter with every national analyst and personality racing to publicly claim their Big Z stock. We’ve never seen anything like it. Any big-picture dream you had of what he could be as a basketball player, he surpassed them tenfold in 480 whopping seconds.
His version of coming back to Earth in the second half was a two-point, two-rebound, one-block stretch in another eight minutes of game action. He got called for a flagrant foul on a thrown elbow, then a tech for doing a chin-up on the rim after throwing down a dunk. Then he tried a no-look pass in transition, which sailed out of bounds. Missed defensive rotation here, wrong spot on offense there — hey, he’s still learning. Almost like he was playing in the first college basketball game of his career hours after finding out he was eligible to suit up in the first place.
But those individual moments? Straight out of a movie, stuff you couldn’t make up if you tried.
And here’s the thing: it wasn’t a fluke. He’s not going to make four (later ruled as three) 3-pointers in a row every game, but those are shots he’s taken and made his entire youth career. And frankly, that wasn’t even the most impressive part of his game. It was the way he ran the floor, his nose for the ball, putting it on the deck like a guard. Hell, he called for a clear-out on the perimeter at one point, ready to set up his own shot or drive to the bucket. At 7-2.
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Look, we learned Ivisic is a player. He’s not a circus act or sideshow — although squirting himself in the face with water in the huddle was about as funny as it gets.
I don’t know what it looks like, but Ivisic has a spot in this rotation. You can’t have a conversation about players being able to pass, dribble and shoot and not include Big Z. The dude was a team-high +14 in the plus/minus in 16 minutes, Kentucky playing its best basketball of the day with him on the floor. He’s going to have to play, even if it means other feelings get hurt as roles are diminished.
“I’ll play him. I don’t know how much,” Calipari said after the Mississippi State win earlier in the week. “Maybe both big guys don’t do (well) and then he goes nuts and we look around and say, ‘Oh my gosh, they’re not gonna play anymore.’ Maybe, or maybe it’s like, ‘Geesh, these two are better than him.’ We’ll see.”
How’d that work out for everyone? Yeah, sounds like the former. And that’s not to say Aaron Bradshaw and Ugonna Onyenso were bad — they combined for ten points, eight rebounds, two blocks and two steals in their own right — but Ivisic just took this team to a different planet. I mean, he actually looked like one of those aliens from Space Jam who just absorbed basketball superpowers, towering over the poor Looney Tunes.
At minimum, it’s a conversation the staff now must have about how to move forward.
The offense continued its historic pace, 105 points scored on 61.9% shooting, 56.0% from three and 76.5% at the line, five players in double figures and two with 20-plus. Tre Mitchell was ridiculous, dog-walking the Georgia defense for 23 points on 8-10 shooting with five rebounds, four assists and a block in 28 minutes. Isn’t it nice to get him a breather? Antonio Reeves, the king of quiet scoring barrages, went for 21 on 12 shots with five boards and four dimes himself. Dude is putting together a legitimate argument for All-America honors, certainly All-SEC. And how about DJ Wagner going for 18 points and 10 assists? He continues to take steps forward, getting better every time out there. Shoot, Reed Sheppard went 4-5 from three while adding five dimes and two steals! Yet that’s somehow the sixth- or seventh-most important storyline of the night, defense and giving up the late lead also thrown in there, too.
But none of it matters. Because at long last, Big Z is free, and he made sure to let the basketball world know about it.
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