Oscar Tshiewbe might be appreciated more and have a higher value at UK than he did at West Virginia. (UK Athletics Photo)
If you regularly watch Public Broadcasting Television (PBS) you’re probably familiar with a show called “Antiques Roadshow.” The premise of the show is that various people bring items to be evaluated by experts — people that know the exact value of old, obscure things or things that sometimes don’t look valuable at all.
Sometimes they look like, well, junk … and sometimes they are. But once the item is put into the hands of an expert it quickly becomes obvious that something that may not have seemed valuable in the place it was in — someone’s basement, garage, or attic — really has great value once it is put into its proper place, namely the hands of a great collector.
One item recently that came up on the show was a painting that a man brought in from Corpus Christi, Texas. For years it had hung on the back of a door in his family home. The expert, after examining it, revealed that the painting was a masterpiece known as “El Albanil” and was painted by Diego Rivera in 1904. It was valued at about one million dollars.
It’s amazing that something like a painting hanging on the back of a door — where no one sees it or values it — could actually be so valued when it is put in its proper place.
That’s kind of where the Kentucky Basketball program is right now. John Calipari has become the collector of loose odds and ends of players that didn’t seem to be completely recognized for the intrinsic value they possessed while playing for their former teams.
Take Oscar Tshiewbe for instance. Once the 6-8 big man left West Virginia it appeared that he was the proverbial picture hanging behind the door. As one of the best rebounders in college basketball, he didn’t seem to be valued very highly by the Mountaineers coach Bob Huggins after his departure.
“I think the reality is when Oscar left, we became a much better offensive team because we could spread people (out). I think the challenge was when we had Derek (Culver) and Oscar both, we kind of it seemed like at times ran out of room. … When we had those two post guys, neither one of them could make a shot from the perimeter,” Huggins said in March.
So it appears that Tshiewbe’s value as a rebounder was overlooked because he couldn’t consistently make an outside shot.
Or take a player like former Georgia point guard Savhir Wheeler. I think we can all admit that at this point in his career he has not been a great outside shooter (he shot 22.5 percent from 3-point range last season). But that’s the beauty of finding odds and ends that aren’t valued as highly where they came from. Wheeler played on a terrible Georgia team that has only won 14 of their last 54 SEC games.
He was asked to play defense (1.7 steals per game), rebound (3.8 rebounds per game), score in double figures, and be the fourth-best assist man (7.4 assists per game) in the country. All as a 5-10, 180-pound point guard. That’s pretty tough to do.
It took volume shooting for him to do all that at Georgia, hence his low shooting percentage and low value. But playing for Kentucky he only needs to do two things — play passable defense and be a high-volume assist man. Those are two things he can do well for UK. His value goes up tremendously when he steps onto the floor with the Wildcats.
That brings me to the final undervalued piece that Calipari picked up at the basketball player’s flea market now known as the NCAA Transfer Portal. That would be CJ Frederick, an Iowa sharpshooter. Frederick, a former Covington Catholic High School star, averaged 8.8 points per game in his injury-plagued career at Iowa while hitting 47 percent of his 3-point shots to lead the Big Ten in that category.
As a slightly built 6-3 shooting guard that started 52 games for the Hawkeyes he was counted on to be a key contributor for Fran McCaffery’s team. And although he performed well (Honorable Mention All-Big 10), he wasn’t really in a position to build a complete game there without all the pressure of having to score to support the team.
“I felt like it was best for me and my career to make this move and just develop more as a player, a teammate, a person,” Frederick said about his move to UK.
At UK he will be one of several shooters — Kellan Grady, Dontaie Allen, and Tyty Washington — that can fill it up from beyond the 3-point line. That reduces the pressure and should increase his value in an offense that boasts multiple great shooters, a couple of inside threats, and two point guards that can beat the defense off the dribble and distribute the ball to the open man.
So it appears that at this point in the dead time between seasons Calipari has done what he does best. Gather together the best pieces he could find to build a new coaching staff and player roster to replace one that wasn’t working. He also held on to several pieces — Lance Ware, Jacob Toppin and of course the aforementioned Dontaie Allen — that didn’t look to be too valuable last season but will most likely shoot up in value next year with the addition of Orlando Antigua and Chin Coleman to the coaching staff and a re-made roster that is packed with offensive players.
So sometimes, digging around in the junk from your neighbor’s yard sale or looking through the latest new arrivals at Goodwill can be profitable. You never know when that next Diego Rivera oil painting might show up disguised as a castoff from the Starving Artist’s store.
It looks like John Calipari might have found a few of those this year — even without the help of the experts on the Antiques Roadshow.
