Is DeAndre Liggins, "the forgotten Wildcat" ready to emerge for Calipari's Cats?

Admit it. With the hype of Calipari’s coronation, Patterson’s returning and the “sensational six” newcomers, a lot of you forgot about number 34 on the roster. While Wildcat fans speculate about the starting lineup and what players are going to be first off the bench, DeAndre Liggins gets left out of the conversation. That is kind of unusual for a player that was ranked as the 35th best prospect in the 2009 class, but for whatever reasons, DeAndre Liggins has become the forgotten Wildcat.

A lot of fans still begrudge Liggins the Kansas State incident where Liggins refused to enter the game. With the advent of the Calipari era, it’s time to forget that incident and move on. That incident seemed to stoke a fire in Liggins, who played 27 minutes in the next game vs West Virginia, and then went on four game tear, playing his best basketball of the season, scoring 16, 18, 10, and 10 points. But it was all downhill from there. While initially getting minutes, Liggins went into a slump, hitting double digits only once more (11 points on 3 of 16 shooting vs Ole Miss). As the production slipped, the minutes disappeared as Liggins found himself trapped in an odd substitution pattern. In one six game stretch, Liggins saw 25, 8, 29, 3, 1, and 1 minutes.

As the playing time decreased, Liggins felt pressured to make something happen and the turnovers increased and Liggins found a permanent place in Billy Gillispie’s doghouse. Turnovers was the disease that plagued the 2008-09 Wildcats and by default, Liggins was the posterboy. Not that it was all Liggins fault. The UK found a way to turn the ball over with Liggins thoroughly entrenched on the bench and most fans considered DeAndre a “one and doner” of the bad kind. Liggins even admits that if Gillispie remained UK’s coach, he would not have returned to UK.

But April 1, 2009 should represent a new beginning for DeAndre Liggins. John Calipari’s DDMO appears to be an offense custom fit for the skills of Liggins and with the signings of John Wall and Eric Bledsoe, Liggins will not play out of position at the point. Instead of being the sole play maker, Liggins now has a full team of talented playmakers and the pressure is off him to be “the man”. Now, he can be one of the guys and part of a talented core.

It has to be said that while at Memphis, John Calipari obviously saw something in Liggins and recruited him. The impact of Calipari’s coming to UK was not lost on Liggins, who is excited by the coaching change and sees Cals arrival as a type of cosmic fate:

“I let him down, I came here instead. He came to me, so it’s like a good thing. … I want to play for him. I’m excited.”

The excitement seemed mutual as Calipari singled out Liggins during one of his very first UK practices and told him “If you play the way I ask you, they won’t even recognize you.” Calipari has continued in recent interviews the theme of redemption for DeAndre Liggins, saying that Liggins had a very good summer in the classroom and felt that Liggins was comfortable in his offense and role on the team. What that role will be is yet to be seen, but you get the feeling that Calipari is making Liggins a personal project and that UK fans will be pleased with the final result.

But here we are, less than two months from the season and it is rare to hear any conversations or buzz surrounding Liggins. He has truly become the forgotten Wildcat, but then you find random things on the web that say Liggins is on the way of showing his former 5 star potential. While the below is an un-verified and pretty third person account of how Liggins impressed LeBron James, you have to hope that there is a smidgen of truth in the following account and that we may actually see the personal redemption of DeAndre Liggins this basketball season:

The highlight(s) of the pickup games occurred when DeAndre Liggins called a foul on John Wall. LeBron and Wall BOTH started calling Liggins another word for “cat” and cracked on him for the weak call. DeAndre is as competitive as any player on the court. Don’t mistake the b.s. you saw last season as remotely indicative of his ability to play basketball. After the jabbing from the King and Wall, a match was lit and Liggins “went off”.

Here is the exact description I received: “DeAndre started going nuts and dunking on people and was taking it to Wall as hard as they have seen anybody take it to him. He said he (my brother was referring to the player who plays with the team for most of their pickup games) knew Liggins was good but he had no CLUE he was capable of doing stuff like that. XXXXXX (a former UK player and my brother’s good friend) and I were like “Are you SURE this was DeAndre Liggins and he was actually DUNKING on people?” and he looked at us like we were crazy.

He said Liggins was dominating and literally DUNKING on people. Of course he also said that Liggins’ play sort of inspired Wall to pick it up a notch and all of them were trying to impress LeBron. He just said Liggins really stood out, especially after the King and Wall called him out.”

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