There have been a lot of college basketball stars that have played in Rupp Arena, and none of them have put together a performance on the boards like Oscar Tshiebwe did on Wednesday.
Tshiebwe pulled down an absurd 28 rebounds — to go with 14 points — in No. 20 Kentucky’s 95-60 win over Western Kentucky. He did this with 7’5″ center Jamarion Sharpe — who had seven blocks in this game for Western Kentucky — on the other side.
The 28 rebounds are the most by a Kentucky player since Mike Phillips also had 28 in 1976.
https://twitter.com/KentuckyMBB/status/1473829373698531331
It’s also the highest rebounding total from a D-I player since 2015.
Tshiebwe even outrebounded the entire Western Kentucky team! He’s the first SEC player in the last 25 years to outrebound an entire opposing team.
Tshiebwe is now averaging an incredible 15.5 rebounds per game this season, becoming the first player since Tim Duncan (15.1 rebounds at Wake Forest in 1996-97) to average 15-plus rebounds over the first 11 games of a season.
And in his 11 games, Tshiebwe has all three of the 10-point, 20-rebound games from a Kentucky player over the last 25 seasons. Amazing.
Tshiebwe was a solid player at West Virginia in the previous two seasons, averaging 10.6 points and 8.9 rebounds over that time. But he’s taking things to a completely different level at Kentucky.