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Fletcher draws praise in productive debut for Cats

Freshman wing Cam'Ron Fletcher pressured Morehead State's KJ Hunt during Wednesday's season opener at Rupp Arena.
Freshman wing Cam'Ron Fletcher pressured Morehead State's KJ Hunt during Wednesday's season opener at Rupp Arena. (Mark Cornelison/UK Athletics)

Entering Wednesday's season opener against Morehead State, there wasn't much buzz surrounding Cam'Ron Fletcher.

The freshman wing from St. Louis made sure that would change after a thoroughly productive 12 minutes off the bench in the Wildcats' 81-45 win over the Eagles.

Fletcher did a little bit of everything, scoring nine points on 4-of-5 shooting from the field, grabbing five rebounds, dishing out three assists, and recording a steal.

"I love what I saw from Cam today because he just... plays... hard," Kentucky coach John Calipari said of the 6-foot-6 Fletcher.

The UK boss said Fletcher had not shown that kind of well-rounded performance in the Cats' workouts leading up to the season. For that reason, he was one of the last scholarship players to enter the game.

"But now, what he just did today, we're going to push him in there," Calipari said.

It may have been easy for fans to overlook Fletcher, the lowest-rated member of Kentucky's latest No. 1 recruiting class. "Only" a four-star prospect, he was rated the No. 10 small forward prospect in the nation and the No. 49 prospect overall.

In addition to his new freshman teammates, including five-star wings BJ Boston and Terrence Clarke, he was also overshadowed by UK signing three high-profile transfers in the off-season.

“I don’t care about attention, for real," Fletcher said. "I just play hard and play dirty. That’s just me.”

He got a ringing endorsement from Clarke after Wednesday's game. "Cam is that guy, man. He plays as hard as he can every time he's out there and he gives it his all. That's why I love him to death. That's one of my main guys on the team right now.

"He went out there today and surprised a lot of people."

“It was good," Fletcher said. "For the first game with my team, I just wanted to go out there and have fun. I wanted everyone else on the team to have fun. I just wanted to get the win."

With an eye on building on his debut performance, Fletcher seems to know the quickest route to earning more playing time from Calipari.

“Don’t worry about scoring or anything else," he said. "Just worry about fighting and everything else will fall into place. When you’re playing hard, stuff just falls in line.”


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