Kentucky Wildcats Basketball: An Early Look at the 2015-2016 Season

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It has been a rough month of April and early start to May for the Kentucky Wildcats basketball team. First came the loss to Wisconsin, then the bittersweet loss of seven Wildcats to the draft, and losing out on big time recruits Caleb Swanigan, Brandon Ingram, Stephen Zimmerman, Malik Newman and we’ll go ahead and throw Jaylen Brown in there. It wasn’t all bad in April however, Kentucky did get a commitment from one of the best JUCO players in Mychal Mulder (no word on if Cal is still searching for a player named Scully). Mulder was a lights out shooter from beyond the arch, making 46% of his 3 points shots. So now that the not-so-good month of April is over and Kentucky is possibly not getting anymore commitments from anyone except maybe Jamal Murray, we can start looking ahead to next season.

With missing out on a lot of the top talent in this recruiting class, a lot of people have forgotten about what a great team we already have. We still have a senior in Alex Poythress (McDonalds All-American). We will have juniors Marcus Lee (McDonalds All-American), Derek Willis, Dominique Hawkins (Mr. Kentucky Basketball) and EJ Floreal . Sophomore Tyler Ullis (McDonalds All-Amercian). Then the incoming freshman Isiah Briscoe – #1 PG (McDonald’s All-American), Skal Labissiere – #1 C (McDonald’s All-Anerican) and Charles Matthews.

So, with all that talent, who starts? And who comes off the bench? Earlier today I asked on Twitter from the @WildcatBlueNatn Twitter account, “What is your starting lineup for the Kentucky Wildcats basketball season next year?” and we got a couple of responses. Chris Post (@ThePostman50) said this:

Then we had similar tweet from Steven Carpenter (@Steven_BBN_5) who had this lineup:

So Chris and Steven think the lineup will be and should be

G: Tyler Ulis – Sophomore

G: Isaiah Briscoe – Freshman

G/F: Charles Matthews – Freshman

F: Alex Poythress – Senior

C: Skal Labissiere – Freshman

That lineup features 3 freshman, a sophomore and a senior. It gives you and an average height of 6 foot 5.8. I think it will eventually be the starting lineup that Calipari will go with. I had originally thought a couple of days ago that the lineup would be Ulis, Briscoe, Poythress, Lee and Labissiere, but I realized something, that lineup severely lacks a shooter. So to compensate you move Poythress to the PF spot and Charles Matthews to the SF spot to give you a 3 point shooter. I do believe that Marcus Lee and Mychal Mulder will be the first two off the bench. Finally we will get to see a heavy dose of Marcus Lee. Also, another person that will be getting some major playing time finally is Derek Willis. Yes, Derek Willis will finally get his chance to shine. I believe Willis will make the best of his opportunity to come off the bench and provide Calipari with the option with size and someone who can shoot the 3 and space out the defense. He will need to work on his defense.

So as you can see we will have yet another fun, exciting team again. That said I do think we will start the season as the #8-9 ranked team. Probably will be a 6-7 loss team and we need to be prepared to know this isn’t going to be like last years team and go in with an open mind. It should be an exciting upcoming season. It’s a long ways out but we’re Kentucky, we are college basketball. For now we can all look forward to watching the 7 Wildcats get drafted.

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