LEXINGTON, Ky. — The way Oscar Tshiebwe crumpled, it looked like he’d just suffered an actual gut punch. “So much pain,” he says now, “that you don’t know what to do.” When the final horn sounded and the unthinkable was suddenly real, as the 15th-seeded Saint Peter’s Peacocks screamed past him to celebrate their epic upset win over Kentucky in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, Tshiebwe staggered a few steps toward the top of the key and then doubled over. In the posture of a man preparing to vomit, he sobbed instead, pulling the collar of his jersey up over his face as if that would hide the devastation. Two teammates consoled him, lifted him and stood on either side to steady him as they shuffled slowly out of the arena.
“He was crushed,” Wildcats assistant coach Orlando Antigua says. “You saw the emotional response. You saw the tears. You saw the pain. Oscar gave us all he had and he thought that would be enough. That kid had never experienced March Madness and he was so excited to be there, and then it was just … over.”
Tshiebwe carried Kentucky that night, as he had all season, with 30 points and 16 rebounds, his 16th consecutive double-double and 28th of the year, both school records. He grabbed more rebounds last season than any Division I player since 1974. He averaged 17.4 points and 15.2 boards, the first major-conference player since Bill Walton in 1973 to be as prolific in both categories. He collected every available piece of hardware meant to honor a national player of the year. He’d gone from Bob Huggins’ doghouse at West Virginia to the penthouse (and a Porsche) at Kentucky, where fans adored him and businesses lined up to buy his endorsement. By almost any measure, it had been a massively successful season for Tshiebwe — except for one gnawing thought.
“The name on my trophies is only my name,” he says. “The name on the national championship trophy is everybody’s. My trophies, nobody will probably remember those. A trophy for the school, it’s going to be talked about forever. Even the walk-ons, people are going to remember them forever if they’re on a national championship team. That’s what I want, for everybody to be remembered.”
That would require something that had only happened once in the last 40 years: the consensus player of the year returning to men’s college basketball.
The last unanimous national player of the year to come back to school was Tyler Hansbrough in 2008. And then he led North Carolina to a national championship. I know this wasn’t how Oscar Tshiebwe wanted his Kentucky career to end. pic.twitter.com/uDQuA5jtV8
— Kyle Tucker (@KyleTucker_ATH) April 20, 2022
While Tshiebwe’s newfound fame and a well-timed NCAA rule change meant his name, image and likeness were worth enough to finally lift his family out of poverty back home in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, his monster season also meant the door to his dream of playing in the NBA was wide open if he was ready to walk through it. That decision took a few weeks, during which time Saint Peter’s continued its dream run all the way to the Elite Eight and Tshiebwe zig-zagged the country collecting his truckload of awards. One of the stops, to snag the Naismith and AP Player of the Year awards, was bittersweet. Those ceremonies were in New Orleans. At the Final Four. Another gut punch.
“People here want a championship,” Tshiebwe says. “These people want a banner, they expect a banner. I don’t just come and pick up my trophies and go. I want to leave something important here.”
That’s why, in the weeks after last season, Tshiebwe didn’t know quite how to feel. It was the strangest sensation, undulating between the spoils of an all-time great individual season and the misery of a monumental team failure. The latter nagged at him, rendered the former a little hollow. Maybe that wouldn’t have mattered as much, maybe he could’ve ignored the aching disappointment, if he was a projected lottery pick or even a surefire first-rounder. But he was neither. So with an NIL windfall as his safety net and hoping to improve on second-round feedback, Tshiebwe became the first Naismith Award winner to return to school since North Carolina’s Tyler Hansbrough in 2008.
Teammates first rejoiced, then cracked a joke: Let’s go beat Saint Peter’s. He can laugh about that now, but only through gritted teeth.
“I cannot end my college career losing to Saint Peter’s,” Tshiebwe says. “I came back for one reason. Number nine, that’s my purpose.”
It’s been a decade since Kentucky won its eighth national title, and now Tshiebwe feels such a personal sense of responsibility to deliver the ninth that he’s left himself reminders all around. Saved as the lock screen of his phone: No. 9. Scrawled on the mirror in his room: No. 9. If the NCAA allowed it — they don’t because of the way officials signal fouls — his jersey number would’ve changed from No. 34 last season to No. 9 this year.
“I wish I could,” he says. “Everywhere I look, I want to see nines, just to remind myself of the goal I have, to remind myself it’s all about winning number nine.”
Oscar Tshiebwe won every major national player of the year award last season and could be the first repeat winner since Virginia’s Ralph Sampson.
When Tshiebwe told John Calipari he was coming back to school, he gave a simple explanation: “Unfinished business.” Even so, “there were people in his ear trying to get him to leave,” Calipari says, right up until the moment he publicly announced his return on April 20. In fact, at one point in the spring, Tshiebwe recorded two videos — one said he was staying, the other announced he was leaving. But in the end, “It was him saying, ‘I want to come back and win a championship and I want to come back and be a lottery pick,” Calipari told former UK stars Dan Issel and Mike Pratt on their radio show after the decision was made. “I said, ‘All right, I like those two things. Let’s go for them.’”
Roy Williams and Tyler Hansbrough know something about that. Like Kentucky last season, North Carolina had the best player in the country and a team it thought could win the whole thing in 2008. Hansbrough averaged 22.6 points and 10.2 rebounds and swept every major award as a junior. The Tar Heels got all the way to the Final Four. But their own unceremonious exit, a drubbing at the hands of eventual national champion Kansas, stung every bit as much as being bounced by a tiny Jesuit school that plays its home games in a glorified high school gym. If a national title feels like an attainable goal at the beginning of March Madness, whenever and however you lose in the tournament brings heartbreak.
On the bright side: If enough good players come back angry, that kind of hurt can become fuel. In 2008, future draft picks Ty Lawson, Wayne Ellington and Danny Green decided to come back for another season at UNC, and five-star recruits Ed Davis and Tyler Zeller were coming in. So Hansbrough, a projected first-round pick but not a lottery lock, joined them. In doing so, he became the first national player of the year to return to school since Ralph Sampson, who is the last player to repeat the award. (The Virginia star actually three-peated the Naismith Award in 1981, 1982 and 1983).
“Let’s be honest: If Oscar or myself were going to be a top-five pick, I don’t think we would’ve come back saying, ‘I came back to win.’ I want to be realistic about that,” Hansbrough says. “But that was a tough loss for us to swallow, and I felt like with that kind of motivation and team chemistry — everybody was back and we all really liked each other — what’s one more year? I thought we probably had a much better team than even the year before, and winning it all felt like a real possibility. It was kind of like, hey, if they’re in, I’m in. Let’s do this.”
Williams initially balked at Hansbrough’s decision, because he hadn’t just suddenly blown up as a junior, as Tshiebwe did. Hansbrough averaged at least 18 and 7 every season at North Carolina and became the only four-time, first-team All-American in ACC history. Nobody would’ve blamed him for skipping his senior year to get started on a pro career, especially since there was no NIL money back then.
“I said, ‘Are you sure, son? You can go to the NBA. It’s OK.’ I told him he could go after his freshman and sophomore year, too,” Williams says. “But after his junior year, he said, ‘Coach, I’m not going to change anything about the way the NBA looks at me. I’m going to be somewhere between 12th and 16th in the draft and that’s just what it is (he went 13th in the 2009 draft). But I came here to win a national championship.’ He was very adamant about that being what he wanted to do. That’s the only thing Tyler cared about — not All-ACC or All-America or the scoring record or rebounding record — just winning the darn thing. If that was his goal, needless to say, that’s what we set as our long-range goal for the entire team.”
No pressure, guys. The Tar Heels began that next year as the first unanimous No. 1 team in the history of the AP preseason poll and did not disappoint. They won their first 13 games, most of them effortlessly, beating Kentucky by 19, Oregon by 29, Notre Dame by 15, and Michigan State by 35. They lost only three regular-season games, two of them by three points on the road in ACC play, and never fell out of the top five. Williams had only two real concerns: staying healthy enough to finish the job and keeping his team focused on the work it takes to win a championship rather than the desired result.
Hansbrough missed four games early in the season with shin and ankle injuries that “scared me to death,” Williams says. “And I think that’s something Cal will probably try to be very cautious of with Oscar, because if a guy comes back, you want to make sure you do everything you can to take care of him and make it a good year for him. We sat Tyler out early because we were concerned about a stress-reaction condition and wanted him to get plenty of rest — but he was very vocal about wanting to play.”
That probably sounds familiar to Kentucky fans. Their own star also plays with a reckless abandon that seems to be the only way he knows how. The program recently shared a photo of Tshiebwe diving across the floor for a loose ball during a preseason practice. In September. Another image emerged last month of him wearing a sweat-soaked tank top with one strap ripped almost completely off. In that image, the veins in his forehead are bulging and his stare is stone-cold. The guy whose nickname at UNC was “Psycho T” can relate.
“I see the tenacity,” Hansbrough says. “The way he rebounds and goes after it like nothing else matters is very similar.”
When you play that way, you earn the right to lead.
Fight for everything ? pic.twitter.com/XcrfahONY7
— Kentucky Men’s Basketball (@KentuckyMBB) September 23, 2022
‘Til the battle is won ? pic.twitter.com/BHon3ArL3u
— Kentucky Men’s Basketball (@KentuckyMBB) September 21, 2022
“There’s no question that Tyler was our driving force. When he said something, everybody stood at attention,” Williams says. “Oscar’s got a way of commanding a presence in that locker room too, I would expect, and that’s going to be great for them. I loved watching him last year. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a better rebounder in college basketball. I’ve never played (the card game) Bridge a day in my life, but I hear people talk about players who bid on everything; Oscar bids on every shot that goes up. He’s trying to get it, all-out. There was a guy once who said he thought every shot was just a pass to him, and that’s the way I think Oscar looks at it.”
It’s hard to imagine Tshiebwe could match his historic numbers this season, but he might not have to. Hansbrough’s minutes, points, rebounds and shooting percentage all dipped his senior year. He did not repeat as national player of the year and finished third in ACC Player of the Year voting. His teammate, Lawson, won that award. But North Carolina won the 2009 national championship, and Hansbrough had a huge hand in it: 24 and 10 against Gonzaga in the Sweet 16, 18 and 11 against Villanova in the Final Four, 18 and 7 against Michigan State in the title game.
Hansbrough can relate to Tshiebwe’s total focus on finishing the job, “but I would say, ‘Let’s take advantage of today.’ My team, we made the most of every single day. We didn’t need to put it up on a bulletin board, our big goal, because we were so mad and frustrated about losing the previous year after getting so close. We didn’t need any external reminders. We were driven internally.”
The task for Tshiebwe this summer was to increase his flexibility and improve footwork so that his movements become more graceful than lumbering. The 6-foot-9, 260-pound hulk with 7 percent body fat wants to look like a natural athlete, not just a robotic rebounding machine. Kentucky’s new strength coach, Brady Welsh, put him through a stretching program, took his shoes off to teach Tshiebwe’s feet the right way to interact with the ground and introduced him to mixed martial arts.
“Strength-wise, power-wise, force-wise, leverage-wise, he’s the strongest person, easily, on the team. He’s probably the best I’ve ever worked with,” Welsh says. “So now we’re trying to fine-tune different things with him. His biggest thing is continuing to become a more fluid athlete, a better basketball player. So whenever you watch him with the naked eye, you think, ‘That’s a basketball player.’ You don’t necessarily think, ‘That’s Oscar the big brute.’ ”
More free, more fluid, more athletic.
Inside the weight room with @B_Welsh11 on how @Oscartshiebwe34 is becoming a better athlete. pic.twitter.com/vJ1dtHa7wB
— Kentucky Men’s Basketball (@KentuckyMBB) August 7, 2022
Tshiebwe hopes his increased mobility and offseason skill work will make him more of a threat on the perimeter, offensively and defensively. He wants to be able to catch the ball at the top of the key, pump fake and attack the rim. He believes he’s better equipped to step out defensively and keep guards in front of him. He’s been working on his mid-range jump shot, which wasn’t bad last season, and trying to extend it out beyond the 3-point line. He’s never attempted a 3 in a real college game and missed all five tries during Kentucky’s exhibition trip to the Bahamas in August.
He swears he won’t become obsessed with outside shooting, though, and won’t stray too far from the things that made him such an unstoppable force in the paint last season.
“Oscar is a big man, and the big man still has a huge importance to basketball, regardless of what the analytics say or anyone thinks,” Hansbrough says. “They say the big man is a dying breed, but the best player in the country last season was a big man, and he’s coming back to school, and I think that’s really exciting.”
It also means there will be a target on Tshiebwe’s back, but he welcomes that challenge. He’s already thinking ahead about counter-attacks for teams that are determined to neutralize Kentucky’s star. He’s especially proud of his improved passing.
“They’re going to be in trouble,” he says. “If they double me, my teammates can shoot. If they don’t double me, it’s over. I know that everybody is going to try to figure out how to stop me, but the only person who can stop me is myself. If they start doubling me, I’m going to get a triple-double. I told Sahvir (Wheeler), ‘Be careful, brother. This year, we’re going to be competing for assists.’ I like when I’m a target. I like when people are coming for me. I study more than anybody in this game, and I’m going to learn how they’re going to try to stop me, and I’ll just be ready.”
Tshiebwe got a taste of the circus that will be this season when he landed in Los Angeles for an awards show this spring, expecting to enjoy a few days of peace. He figured nobody that far from Lexington would even know who he was, but people at the airport immediately recognized him and started calling out his name. “Come on, man, this is not Kentucky!” he remembers saying. “I tried to go to the water, spend time in the sand. People would not leave me alone. ‘Are you coming back? Are you coming back?’ Not just Kentucky fans. Duke fans, North Carolina, everybody.”
“I would tell him to just block everybody out,” Hansbrough says. “The only people who really matter are in your locker room. You’re going to have a lot of things said to you, about you, unsolicited advice, people asking for things, blah, blah, blah. The most important thing you can do is be present with your teammates and coaches and listen to them, the people going through it with you.”
That part seems to come naturally for Tshiebwe, who trusts Calipari implicitly and has leaned all the way into his role as mentor to younger teammates and motivator of them all. “Cal loves a player-led team, and it’s hard to beat a team led by a player like Oscar,” Antigua says. Tshiebwe told Calipari in the spring, “You better get me some people who can shoot, people who can pass the ball and who can play, and I’ll come back and we’re going to win a championship.”
Wheeler, a senior point guard who led the SEC in assists the last two seasons, came back. So did Jacob Toppin, who averaged 16.8 points in the Bahamas and seems poised for a breakout season. Sophomore Daimion Collins, a former five-star recruit who jumps out of the gym, also returned. UK now has a healthy CJ Fredrick, who made 46.6 percent of his 3s in two seasons at Iowa. Calipari added a sharp-shooting transfer, Antonio Reeves, the second-leading scorer in the portal and who made 14 of 27 3-pointers and earned MVP honors in the Bahamas. Kentucky also signed two more McDonald’s All-Americans, Cason Wallace and Chris Livingston, who are among the more physically impressive UK freshmen in recent memory.
Tshiebwe believes Calipari assembled a championship-level roster around him. “The freshmen look like grown men. They’re ready to play. They’ve dominated practice every day. The returning guys are doing very good, too. Sometimes I get mad the way we’re shooting, because I need them to miss so I can grab some rebounds, but they keep making everything. So I’m confident we have a chance.”
That is a stark contrast to how he felt in March, when he was doubled over in disbelief and trying to make sense of an ending he never saw coming. He could not let that be his ending.
“Some of my teammates were not ready. I was ready, but they were not,” Tshiebwe says. This year, “I told Coach, ‘If I see somebody not ready, I’m going to take your place. I’ll be the coach for a minute. I gotta choose who’s ready to play.’ I see myself as a national champion. I’m not coming back to just have fun. I’m not coming back just to win national player of the year. I’ve already got like 10 trophies. I don’t even have a place in my room to put them. I’m coming back with a different mindset.”
Tshiebwe says he hears every day from fans who desperately want to see Kentucky back in the Final Four for the first time since 2015, who would weep and name children after him if these Wildcats win a ninth national championship. That night in Indianapolis, as he cried into the collar of his jersey, a thought bubbled up in Tshiebwe: He would’ve traded all those awards for one ring. Because that would be for everyone, but it would also cement his own place in the program’s history.
“If I get that,” he says, “I’ll probably be a legend.”
(Photos: Courtesy UK Athletics)
