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This has been a very trying season for highly-touted Kentucky freshman big man Skal Labissiere, but is the 6-foot-11 Haitian beginning to turn a corner?
Wildcats head coach John Calipari believes that may be the case, even if Labissiere’s numbers don’t completely support that notion.
“Getting Skal, he’s slowly coming back to where he can give us minutes,” Calipari said Monday morning on the SEC coaches teleconference. “He had a couple of blocks, some opportunities, he dunked some balls. He has a presence, but we got to see what are the max. minutes he can go right now because I don’t want to throw him to the wolves like we did early, it just didn’t work.
“Now, he’s playing better, and what’s the max. minutes we can go with him?”
Labissiere, projected as the No. 6 overall pick in the 2016 NBA Draft by DraftExpress, played just eight minutes and scored four points in a 75-70 loss at Auburn on Saturday afternoon. He hasn’t played more than 16 minutes in a month and is averaging just 7.7 points and 3.2 rebounds in 17.7 minutes per game.
His struggles are a microcosm of Kentucky’s overall problems at the moment. The Wildcats are 13-4 overall, but just 3-2 against the SEC as they get set to play at Arkansas on Thursday night in Fayetteville.
Calipari doesn’t seem to be worried. Not about Labissiere or his team, who he compared to the 2013-14 Kentucky squad. That group struggled during the regular season, but picked up steam late to advance to the national championship game, where it fell to Connecticut.
“He’s finally got the pressure off of him, so just play now,” Calipari said. “I don’t want it to be 30 or 40-minute games, because he’s not ready for that. If he can go 15, 20 minutes and really help our team, it’s really going to change his mentality and it’s gonna help us immensely.
“Every road game for us, it’s a Super Bowl. The guys that have been here know it, the young guys are figuring that out, but it’s a process. I’m not panicked in any way. I knew going into this season, it wasn’t last year’s team. I said all along we’re one of those teams, but we’re not that good. We’re good, but we’re not what we were a year ago.”
