Kentucky Basketball: Ugonna Onyenso injury rains on a bright past week
Kentucky Basketball was able to win the GBLOL JAM Tournament this past week without center Ugonna Onyenso but will be without him for a while further now. How does this impact the overall roster?
It was a highly successful week for Kentucky Basketball in the GBLOL JAM event. They went 4-0 overall, beating Team Canada twice to win the Gold Medal, representing Team USA. Antonio Reeves was the MVP for the Wildcats, averaging a team-leading, 23 ppg. It was effectively an 8-man rotation outside of some minutes for freshman Joey Hart.
That’s because the team was without two of its big men on the roster. Aaron Bradshaw was already out, recovering from a foot injury from before, and expected to be sidelined for a couple more months. Unfortunately for Kentucky, they also lost Ugonna Onyenso as well, who reportedly suffered a broken foot of his own in the warmup game right before the start of this tournament.
It’s a big setback for a team that on paper, only had two true centers on the roster. And now both of them are hurt. Onyenso, a 6’11 center from Nigeria and former top-40 prospect, played 16 games as a true freshman, averaging 2.5 ppg and 2.6 rpg. His strength is interior defense and being an elite shot-blocker, something he reportedly was doing in the warm-up game before getting hurt.
The hope is that Onyenso will be back around the time the season tips off but with bigs and foot injuries, you can never be sure. Plus, he’s still not fully proven at the D-I level. That may leave West Virginia transfer Tre Mitchell to play a good amount of ball at the five-spot, something he’s capable of doing offensively but could be an issue on defense.
Yet even if that’s the case, another bright spot that emerged for the Wildcats was the play of five-star freshman forward, Justin Edwards. He was tied with Mitchell for second in scoring (13.5 ppg) and played the four-spot for a good portion. Adou Thiero, one of the few returning players on the roster, started games as the power forward and proved that he can be a real contributor next season.
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Kentucky’s current lack of size wasn’t exploited in the GBLOL JAM Tournament but the SEC has plenty of bigs to take advantage of. So to be clear, the Wildcats need to have both Bradshaw and Onyenso back and healthy and effective. That’ll be a storyline to watch, less than a few months away from the start of the 2023-24 campaign.