CJ Fredrick “has to be on the floor” for Kentucky

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CJ Fredrick can do more than just make 3-pointers. (Vicky Graff Photo)

As soon as CJ Fredrick hit his fourth 3-pointer against Missouri Western Tuesday night, ESPN/SEC Network college basketball analyst Seth Greenberg said exactly what a lot of Kentucky basketball fans were thinking.

“CJ Frederick has to be on the floor for this team,” said Greenberg.

All-American Oscar Tshiebwe joined the SEC Network crew during the game and told announcer Tom Hart that Fredrick is a “great shooter” who also passes the ball. Tshiebwe joked he just tells Fredrick to “miss some” so he can get the offensive rebounds.

Fredrick, a Covington Catholic graduate, was a three-year player at Iowa before transferring to Kentucky. He sad out last year with a leg injury but is a career 46.6 percent shooter from 3-point range.

“But the other things he does, he moves his team, he plays so hard, he talks on defense,” Kentucky coach John Calipari said after UK’s exhibition win Sunday. “Did you see him push Jacob (Toppin) to a man and then he went and guarded the other man? I mean, it’s nice when you have older guys that really know what they’re doing out there. He’s special.”

Fredrick has 15 points on 5-for-8 shooting, three rebounds, one assist and one steal in 27 minutes in the exhibition win. He said it felt “awesome” to be back playing.

“Not playing in a year and a half, I put a lot of hard work into this moment. So, many thanks to all the trainers that have helped me this past year. It was a long year, but being able to get out there and compete again with this group, it was awesome. It was a blessing,” Fredrick said.

He said hitting 3-pointers was nice, especially since the team was struggling offensively.

“We were able to get stops on defense, and get them to transition, that is when I got a lot of my open 3’s. Cason (Wallace) and Jacob (Toppin) found me a couple of times. They were really good passes,” Fredrick said. “A lot of what we do is running up and down, so that was good for us to get back into that.”

Fredrick knew even without Tshiebwe playing — he’s out after undergoing minor knee surgery recently — that Calipari would not be happy with the offensive rebounds Missouri Western had.

“The emphasis (this game) was defense and we were being evaluated on defense and I think we did pretty good on that,” Fredrick said. “We have really good guys and it is fun going against them (in practice) but this was a great team to play early because they run their stuff. That is good for us. We had to get down, communicate and guard.”

8 Responses

  1. I am so looking forward to watching this young man play!!

    One thing that confuses me, how many more years he can play when you factor in COVID year, etc.?

  2. Sunday night showed this team has a long, long way to go in learning how to play without Oscar on the floor. Someone will have to step up and take control of that position. This team looked like no one wanted to do the dirty work inside. I think most of the bigs tried to stay 10-15 feet from the basket.
    Looked to me like poor positioning and even worse effort in the post from these guys.
    They can learn it, and will have to. There will be times when Oscar is not on the floor.

  3. "debris" in the knee that must be removed does not appear instantly, and that debris was there at the end of last season, and during this past summer.

    How can it be that a program like UK can delay the surgery to remove the debris until just before the season begins rather than taking care of this business months ago?

    Inquiring minds want to know.

  4. It’s so easy for us fans to judge this or that,stop and think for min if we know so much why are we fans and not part of the coaching staff…..I’m happy being part of the big blue Nation let’s shout out to the coaches and staff and team we have your back GO BIG BLUE

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