Cats find gold with TyTy Washington at point guard and Davion Mintz at shooting guard

Davion Mintz has regained his mojo for the Cats. (Jeff Houchin Photo)

On Jan. 24th, 1848 James W. Marshall was overseeing the construction of a sawmill on the American River in California. He saw the sun reflecting off something shiny in the river and reached down to pluck 10 to 12 good-sized gold pieces from the bottom of the river. The rest they say is history as the biggest gold rush in American history was started by a man who wasn’t even looking for gold.

The same thing seems to have happened to John Calipari and the Kentucky Wildcats. UK seemed to find two most interesting discoveries from the neck injury that UK point guard Savhir Wheeler suffered against LSU.

One was the additional playing time at point guard that TyTy Washington picked up during that two-game stretch that Wheeler sat out against Georgia and Vanderbilt. That experience that TyTy gained was on full display Wednesday night on the road in College Station against Texas A&M. When Savhir Wheeler was somewhat neutralized in the second half by the Aggies’ physical defense Washington took the ball and played the point guard position with enough grit to get Kentucky over the hump and allow Wheeler a chance to regroup and get back in the game.

Don’t get me wrong, Wheeler played an important role in the game. He finished with an impressive stat line of 12 points on 5-for-8 shooting and 2-for-2 on 3-pointers but unfortunately, he also had eight turnovers with four assists. No matter how well your point guard plays he cannot have a 1:2 ratio of assists to turnovers and stay the point guard very long. It would be like having a quarterback that threw two interceptions for every touchdown. It just doesn’t work.

That’s where Washington came in with his newfound experience. Even though Washington’s scoring wasn’t what UK fans have come to expect down the stretch he was able to steady the offense and with his additional size he was able to overcome the pressure defense that had caused Wheeler to have eight turnovers.

On a night when the opponent played a very physical brand of trapping zone defense, UK’s point guards switched roles. Wheeler shot the ball well and Washington showed his ballhandling abilities when it was very difficult to set up any kind of offensive flow against Texas A&M’s “bump and run”  trapping zone.

The second most interesting development from Wheeler’s two-game absence from the court was the re-emergence of Davion Mintz at the shooting guard position. Mintz has averaged 28 minutes per game since the LSU game. Part of that can be attributed to his improved outside shooting but that is not all Mintz brings to the table.

In looking at the play-by-play for the last 10 minutes of the Texas A&M game Mintz’s name appears everywhere — and it’s mostly on hustle plays. He had a 3-pointer, three free throws out of four, and five defensive rebounds. In a game where points were hard to come by getting six points and five defensive rebounds at crunch time is the difference between winning and losing on the road.

Although his shooting percentages weren’t great (2-for-7 overall and 1-for-5 on 3-pointers) Mintz came up with eight rebounds and only two turnovers in 30 minutes from his guard position.

In previous games when Mintz’s shooting would fall off it seemed to affect his overall game and his minutes dropped significantly. The extra playing time since the LSU game has seemed to re-energize Mintz and he is playing hard and with passion on every play. This Texas A&M game showed once again how valuable Mintz’s experience and athletic ability can be when plugged into one of the three guard positions.

It will be interesting to see as the season unfolds if UK’s newfound “gold” of an additional experienced point guard that can run the offense to go with a newfound shooting guard that gives grit and hustle down the stretch pays dividends against this upcoming stretch of games that will ultimately decide if Kentucky can be a Final Four contender or a team that exits the NCAA Tournament in the 2nd or 3rd round.