"We need Sahvir in the game." Calipari trusts Wheeler to make shots at the line.

On3 imageby:Drew Franklin12/04/22

DrewFranklinKSR

The fan debate around how Sahvir Wheeler is used late in games continues after Kentucky Basketball‘s nail-biting win against Michigan over in London. The pro-Wheeler side of the debate points to Wheeler’s stat line of 11 points, seven assists, three rebounds, and three turnovers, and his six straight second-half points to put Kentucky up eight and force Michigan into a timeout with four-and-a-half minutes to go.

On the other side, many question John Calipari’s late-game strategy of taking the air out of the ball until late in the shot clock for Wheeler to create in the last seven seconds of a possession. Against Michigan, it worked on three straight trips down the floor and the Wolverines never recovered. But is Wheeler on a short clock the best option? There are many skeptics in the long term.

Ultimately, John Calipari has the only opinion that matters and after the Cats won in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame London Showcase, he made it clear that he trusts Wheeler late in games. Calipari’s vote of confidence came after Wheeler missed the front end of a one-and-one with 43 seconds to go, then another with 15 seconds to go. But Kentucky’s head coach still has the utmost confidence in his starting point guard putting away games with the ball in his hands.

We need Sahvir in the game,Calipari said in his postgame remarks from London’s O2 Arena. “I have more comfort in him shooting free throws than he has in himself. I’m like, ‘I want you at the line.’ Matter of fact, I told him to get fouled again and get up there and make one. He missed it again. Cason did the same thing against Michigan State. We make those, we win that game. We don’t make those–we got lucky here.”

Calipari also said late-game execution was a priority in the practices leading up to the victory against Michigan.

“We were better today,” he noted. “We worked on ending games. We were better today except we missed free throws again, which is what we did against Michigan State. We can say it was this, it was that, we should have done this; we make free throws, none of that stuff matters.”

As a team, Kentucky missed half of its 20 attempts in the game for a 10-of-20 shooting performance at the foul line.

“The worst one was, we missed a free throw and because our heads are down, we give them a three and gave them a chance to beat us.”

Calipari will play whoever makes free throws, says Wheeler

Though he wasn’t one of the two players available at the postgame press conference, Sahvir Wheeler spoke publicly about his performance and the team’s win during his postgame radio interview with Jack Givens.

Free throws were a part of that conversation.

“We work on them, “Wheeler said of Kentucky’s early-season free throw woes, especially when trying to close out tight games. “Getting this win and knowing that we could have made some more, it’s definitely going to wake us up. In games like this, especially in conference play and in the NCAA Tournament, this is stuff that we’ve got to do, and even the coaches, they held us accountable after the game, like, “yeah, man, great win, great team win, but we got to make free throws.’

“Coach Cal, he’s gonna play the guys that he knows he can trust to make free throws at the end of the game. If we want to be in in the end of the game, we got to prove to ourselves and to the coaches and everyone else that we can make those free throws.”

Wheeler went 2-for-6 from the free throw line against Michigan, dropping his season average to 61.9 percent on 21 tries. Collectively, the Wildcats are now shooting 68.4 percent from the line on the year.

Wheeler said it gives the team something to work on moving forward from a “takeaway” win.

“This is a takeaway win, a win we can build on. Going back to our previous two showcase-type games, we felt like the first one, we gave that away with Michigan State with a lack of execution on both ends. And the one at Gonzaga, we felt like we fought, but our start was so bad, it was hard for us to overcome. So I think this time we finally put it together. We had a good start, they battled back, we battled back, it was a back-and-forth game, and we was able to get some stops and also make some big-time plays at the end of the game for us to win.”

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2024-03-28