Orlando Antigua on Oscar Tshiebwe for POY, possibility of a senior season

With four games left in the regular season, Oscar Tshiebwe is the frontrunner for National Player of the Year. Kentucky’s junior center continues to lead the nation in rebounding (15.2 RPG) and has 21 double-doubles, nine straight. Oscar is No. 1 in KenPom’s Player of the Year rankings, holding a sizable lead on Gonzaga’s Drew Timme and Chet Holmgren. He’s also the betting favorite in Vegas, ahead of Illinois’ Kofi Cockburn and Wisconsin’s Johnny Davis.

Kentucky assistant Orlando Antigua knows what a National Player of the Year candidate looks like after coaching Cockburn at Illinois last season. When asked what makes Oscar worthy of the honor, Antigua echoed a popular refrain: he makes the extraordinary seem ordinary.

“I think Oscar, in the season that he’s having, in terms of what he’s doing statistically, it’s something that hasn’t been done in 30, 40 years. Averaging almost 15 points and 15 rebounds and doing it night in and night out. When you look up and it’s a 20 [points] and 14 [rebounds] and it’s ho-hum, it’s impressive.”

Early in the season, a minor criticism of Oscar’s game on the offensive end was his tentativeness in the post. Antigua said that the staff has been hard at work to simplify the game for Oscar down low; it shows.

“It changed just by repetition and he and I spending a lot of time in the gym and talking through [it] and showing him film about, ‘Okay, what are you thinking here? What are you doing?’ ‘I’m thinking too much.’ ‘Yeah, you’re thinking too much. Just be quick and simple.’ You’re doing your work before you receive the ball. When you receive the ball in the paint area, it’s to get fouled, it’s to get to the basket, it’s to finish. After that, you let your instincts take over. I think we’ve simplified a lot of things for him and it’s really helped his game blossom.”

“There’s a lot to add” in a potential senior season

Even though Oscar is on track to be named the best player in college basketball, his NBA stock is still in question. Right now, he’s a second-round pick in The Athletic’s mock draft, a late first-round pick in Yahoo’s, and off the board in ESPN’s. As the NBA continues to move away from traditional bigs, Oscar can improve his stock by expanding his game offensively. With the news that he can now benefit from his Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) and a multimillion-dollar deal potentially on the table for next season, returning for a senior year is starting to make sense.

“I think what we can continue to help add to his game,” Antigua said. “If we’re fortunate to get him back, there’s a lot. There’s a lot to add to him. There’s a lot to his ball-handling, there’s a lot to his passing, and obviously can continue to extend his range to his shooting. But that’s something that we’ll be able to address if we’re fortunate enough to get him back in the future.”

At West Virginia, Bob Huggins pulled Oscar from a game if he missed a shot. Breaking him of that fear has been a work in progress for Kentucky’s coaching staff since he arrived in Lexington a year ago. In December, he turned a corner, debuting a beautiful midrange jumper. More recently, the staff has challenged him to work on his perimeter defense, which improved vs. Alabama.

“Obviously, he’s gotten better as the year has progressed in terms of showing his range up to 15-17 feet. We’ve challenged him now on making sure he’s in position defensively to sit and guard guys when we go into shortened clock situations and he has to switch out to a guard and he’s shown the capacity to do that.

“We’re going to keep challenging him. And you know, as coaches, we’re never satisfied. We want to keep adding to their game. We want to keep challenging them. When they give us what we’ve asked, we’ll ask for more because we think they’re capable of giving us more.”