Aaron Bradshaw Might be Ready to Start Playing Soon

Vicky Graff Photo

SEC Network announcer Mike Morgan dropped a little nugget during Kentucky’s 118-82 win over Marshall Friday night that should have UK fans even  more excited about this year’s team.

“We watched Aaron Bradshaw in practice today and the freshman phenom looked pretty good. Working out hard today in practice,” Morgan said.

Kentucky coach John Calipari said during his pregame radio show that Bradshaw was back practicing after injuring his foot in March but had not been through full contact workouts yet. He didn’t play in Friday’s win but before the game he was on the court working out and showed no signs of problems with his injured foot.

Calipari said after the game Bradshaw has been doing drill work but “not the competitive man-on-man, body-to-body” work yet.

Calipari wouldn’t speculate on when Bradshaw might do more.

“If I give something, then everybody will say he’s lying. And I don’t know,” the UK coach said.

Is there a chance Calipari might just decide to play him one game and send him to check in without alerting anyone before he does that?

“I wouldn’t mind doing that. But you (media members) will probably know. Someone will say something.”

Calipari mentioned he had “people” at practice watching when he had Bradshaw, 7-footer Zvonimir Ivisic and Jordan Burks playing together with guards Rob Dillingham and Reed Sheppard.

He also said that injured 7-footer Ugonna Onyenso is also “running and jumping” now.

When Bradshaw is cleared to play, Calipari said the team will likely do a few different things.

“Right now we cannot post-up our four man. Do we want to make Tre (Mitchell) a four instead of the five? Why? Tre’s really good at what he is doing. Why screw him up? Let him keep playing and now your four ends up being 7-2,” Calipari said.

“He (Bradshaw) can shoot it. We can post him. You know, instead of mush-mouth, you can run the stuff we’re running and run them into post-ups. You can do all of that stuff, you know, ball screens with him or Z.”

Calipari said players can throw lobs easier to Ivisic than Bradshaw while Bradshaw is the better shooter.

“Ugo is a good player. He is not even the same. When you look at him, he looks like a swimmer. He is cut. He has gained 25 pounds. But even without him, I’m liking what we’re seeing. And now you get one big and he floats into what we are doing. Pretty good stuff,” the UK coach said.

Ivisic was not at Friday’s game against Marshall because he had a 104-degree fever, the second time he’s been sick since arriving at UK in mid-October. The first time he had food poisoning. He’s also still waiting to be cleared by the NCAA.

“I worry that if Z is cleared, he’s physically not — he has just gotten sick or hurt and goes four or five days and how ready will he be? I don’t know yet,” Calipari said.  “But it will be nice to have one more big body that we can throw in instead of them getting lay-ups, and those are all blocks if you have got a big guy in there.”