(TBT Photo)
La Familia coach Tyler Ulis believes that Willie Cauley-Stein, a consensus First-Team All-American and the SEC Defensive Player of the Year in 2015, is using The Basketball Tournament (TBT) to hopefully jump start his professional career again.
“That’s definitely what we’ve said. That’s just added pressure, though. I think it’s a great platform to do your thing,” Cauley-Stein said. “Whatever comes from it, comes from it. But really just going out there and playing hard and kind of showing that I’m only 30. There’s still a lot of games left and hopefully some will come out.”
La Familia, UK’s alumni team playing for the $1 million first-place purse, opened tourney play Friday night in Rupp Arena with an easy win and will play again today at 2 in Rupp in the second round.
Cauley-Stein had five points on 2-for-3 shooting along with six rebounds, three blocks and one assist Friday. He’ll likely need bigger numbers for UK to continue to advance but was content in the first game to let UK’s guards dominate the game. However, he also enjoyed interacting with UK fans before and during the game.
Cauley-Stein played in 105 games in three years at Kentucky under coach John Calipari and was sensational his junior year in 2014-15 when he averaged 8.9 points, 6.4 rebounds, 1.7 blocks, 1.2 steals and 1.0 assists per game while shooting 57 percent from the field. He was the sixth pick in the 2015 NBA draft after helping UK go 38-0 before losing to Wisconsin in the Final Four.
He played in 422 NBA games in seven seasons averaging 8.7 points, 5.9 rebounds and 1.4 assists per game before playing overseas, including last season in Varese, Italy.
Cauley-Stein had been weighing options to return overseas or play in Puerto Rico before getting this opportunity to showcase what he can still do.
“Keep something going. You don’t want to stop playing for too long. I know that for sure, especially if you’re trying to keep it going when you get to stopping a little too long,” Cauley-Stein said. “It doesn’t matter how young or old it is.”
Cauley-Stein believes if a professional team sees a player has not been playing, it just moves on to the “next guy, next wave” rather than giving the older player another chance.
You just gotta kind of stay busy and stay ready. I’ve easily had opportunities where I wasn’t ready. It’s just about staying ready at this point, learning from that and letting the chips fall where they fall,” the former Wildcat said.
