TyTy Washington "wears a lot of hats" for Kentucky, says Chin Coleman

If you’ve seen the last four Kentucky Basketball games, you’ve seen a team that is starting to really figure things out. The Wildcats found their swagger, it has been said many times the last couple of weeks, and on Monday the swagger continued when Chin Coleman held a press conference to preview the LSU trip.

Among the many things Coleman had on his mind, TyTy Washington‘s role on the team was one of them. Washington (who, moments after Coleman spoke, was named SEC Freshman of the Week for the third time) is one of the key players in Kentucky’s rotation. However, his role hasn’t been as celebrated as Oscar Tshiebwe’s insane rebounding rate or the hot-shooting of Kellan Grady, or even the assist machine that is point guard Sahvir Wheeler. Washington has done plenty of contributing—he’s second on the team in scoring—but it has been so efficient, sometimes his best performances fly under the radar.

His assistant coach, Coleman, called him a Swiss Army knife at the two-guard spot for Kentucky.

“He’s got a lot of responsibilities for us because he has to defend, a lot of time, the other top guard that’s on the top of the scouting report on the other team,” Coleman said of Washington. “So he’s got to make sure he does a good job defending that person, containing that person, as well as he’s playing a lot of combo for us. So he’s got to switch from being a scorer to a scorer and a distributor when he’s playing the point guard for us, and then obviously he’s got to be a guy that makes shots from the 3-point area.”

Coleman added, “He wears a lot of hats for us.”

With the wide range of responsibilities, Washington’s biggest challenge is staying consistent, Coleman says, “to keep the main thing, the main thing.”

“For him, his challenge is to be consistent in all of those areas and not let or allow for any of that to take away him being a Swiss army knife. I think that’s something Coach Calipari called him the other night was, the Silent Killer. He comes in the game and almost got a triple-double and no one even knows it. He gets 15, 16 points and it’s not, WOW, because he’s efficient.”

Heading into the LSU game, Washington is Kentucky’s second-leading scorer (14 ppg), second in minutes (30.5 mpg), second in assists (3.9 apg), and a close third in rebounding (4.2 rpg).

Veteran Davion Mintz says, “The sky is the limit for him. He hasn’t gone as deep in his bag as he can.”