Oscar Tshiebwe was taken advantage of in blowout loss at Alabama

The Kentucky Wildcats were completely run off the court in their blowout loss to the Alabama Crimson Tide on Saturday.

It was a miserable performance from Oscar Tshiebwe, who was struggling on the defensive end and couldn’t score over Alabama’s length on offense.

Tshiebwe finished the game with just 4 points on 1/7 shooting, 6 rebounds, 4 fouls, and 4 turnovers.

After the game, John Calipari didn’t hold back in his criticism of Tshiebwe’s performance.

“Oscar played the beginning of the game. He gave up five dunks,” Calipari stated in postgame interviews

That explained why Tshiebwe was benched early in the first half and didn’t check back in until late in the period, despite not being in foul trouble.

On the offensive end, Tshiebwe could not find a way to score over the length of Charles Bediako.

“He (Tshiebwe) was fading away on some of this stuff, and that gave Bediako a chance to block shots instead of going through him,” Calipari said. “This kid (Bediako) has bothered him in the past. He’s 7-foot. He’s long.”

Alabama continued to attack Tshiebwe with ball screens that led to a lot of easy buckets for them. Alabama coach Nate Oats said that was the plan coming into the game.

“We decided to attack him early on ball screens. I don’t think he’s very good at guarding ball screens,” Oats said of Tshiebwe. “We got behind him three times right out of the gate.”

He continued, “We’ve seen him mess up a bunch of ball screens in scouting them.”

Everyone has a bad game sometimes, and that was the case for Tshiebwe on Saturday. Now, we have to see how he responds and works to be better the next time he faces a team with length like they faced against Alabama.

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