Kellan Grady's defense on Ochai Agbaji should not go unnoticed
Kentucky and Kansas showcased their respective Player of the Year candidates on Saturday night, with the one in a Wildcat uniform coming out ahead in both the box score and win column.
UK’s Oscar Tshiebwe got the best of KU’s Ochai Agbaji in Kentucky’s 80-62 drumming of Kansas inside of Allen Fieldhouse. The Wildcat big man dropped a cool 17 points and 14 rebounds on 8-13 shooting, dominating the glass in his typical fashion while feasting in the paint against an undersized Jayhawk frontcourt.
Agbaji, on the other hand, was held in check for nearly the full 40 minutes. Kansas’ 6-foot-5 senior is one of the deadliest scorers in all of college basketball, entering Saturday night averaging over 21 points per game while shooting 52.7 percent from the floor and 47.0 percent from beyond the arc.
But matched up against Kentucky’s Kellan Grady, Agbaji struggled to find any rhythm on offense.
Agbaji finished with 13 points on 4-14 shooting and a 2-6 mark from 3-point range. His 28.6 percent field goal percentage was tied for the worst of his 2021-22 season so far. He added just two rebounds and three assists while turning the ball over twice in the process. For the majority of the night, his primary defender was a man popularly known for his sharpshooting abilities.
“He’s a great player, probably gonna be a first-team All-American,” Grady said of Agbajo during his interview with The Field of 68 on Saturday night. “What we said is you’re not going to shut the guy out but we want to make everything difficult and I think we did a good job of that collectively. It wasn’t just me, I switched off him a bunch of times, guys stayed disciplined and we tried to make him work for all his points. And we did that.”
Grady did a tremendous job all evening of staying as close to Agbaji as possible. It’s clear that Kentucky’s goal on defense was to make someone besides the future All-American beat them. Unfortunately for Kansas, they didn’t have anyone else who could step up and make knock down shots. The rest of the Jayhawks shot 20-45 from the floor and just 4-12 from distance.
It was a particularly rough first half for Agbaji, which set the tone for the rest of the contest. He shot just 1-6 for three points in the opening 20 minutes with Grady stalking his every move.
“Wasn’t really anything differently they did. Just making it tougher for me,” Agbaji said postgame of UK’s defense on him. “That’s what teams are gonna do night-in and night-out but I just really couldn’t get in a groove. Things weren’t rolling for offense anyway in that first half but just finding that groove it kinda came late in spurts here and there but stuff wasn’t falling tonight.”
Coming to Kentucky, Grady wasn’t highlighted as a well-known defender. His tagline has always revolved around scoring 2,000 points at Davidson over an impressive four-year career. Halfway through his season with UK, he’s settled in as one of the nation’s deadliest 3-point shooters. But as has always been the case with John Calipari-coached Kentucky teams, you have to play defense to stay on the court.
Grady has taken that to heart and the positive results are beginning to add up.
“My senior year, I began to guard the best guard on the opposing team at Davidson,” Grady said. “But that’s something that I improved on over time and then this year, you gotta defend to stay on the court with Coach Cal. That’s always been the case for him. Tonight, Chin Coleman and the assistants decided to put me on Ochai (Agbaji).”
Despite the daunting task, Grady was more than up for it. He put on a dazzling defensive display against one of the country’s hottest scorers. And oh yeah, Grady still managed to drop in 12 points of his own on a 4-7 clip from deep.
Not a bad evening for Kentucky’s Granddad.
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