Summer basketball preview: Mulder will fight for an opportunity
Can Mychal Mulder earn meaningful minutes on Kentucky's 2016-17 basketball team?
That's what he's fighting for as the Cats begin their summer work in advance of the season, and though it's not an ideal position for senior and second-year Wildcat, it means he still has an opportunity to make a big mark on the Kentucky program.
Looking back at Mulder's last year
When Mulder committed to Kentucky it appeared to many observers as though John Calipari had found a player who would be a key cog in the 2015-16 machine that is Kentucky basketball.
He was widely praised as a dead-eye shooter who could help last year's Kentucky team, mostly as a three-point threat. He connected on 46-percent of his threes at Vincennes University, scoring 15.7 points per game at that level.
Whatever Mulder's expectations were for last season, he didn't make quite the impact that some believed he would.
Mulder played less than four minutes per game and though he saw court time in most of Kentucky's contests he didn't log any minutes in a dozen of the team's outings. In fact, Mulder attempted only three shots for the entirety of the back half of the schedule dating from mid-January through the Cats loss to Indiana in the Round of 32 in the NCAA Tournament. That Mulder didn't enter the game in Kentucky's loss to the Hoosiers, when the Cats had no answers offensively, was a telling sign of his year long struggle to find an identity and a place on the team.
When John Calipari spoke, earlier in the year, about the team's need for Dominique Hawkins to get back to full health and a readiness to play, he said that his return would probably mean some players would not longer find minutes. While Calipari never said he was referring to Mulder, it's tough to imagine he wasn't one of the players the Kentucky coach had in mind.
While Calipari had surely hoped he was getting a contributor when Mulder committed to his program in late April of 2015, as an productive offensive threat at the JUCO level, in hindsight it's fairly easy to see why Mulder didn't see much court time.
Some of it may have been a failure to live up to expectations, although one could say that a player is who he is, and the hype doesn't always match reality. When any player commits to play for Calipari on scholarship at Kentucky, the hype is inevitable and understandable. What's more, Mulder was a four-star recruit who passed on numerous other high-major offers (as well as mid-major offers which were just as intriguing to him), including some that offered the likelihood or certainty of more minutes than Calipari ever can, at least when there's still the potential for more five-star high school additions.
And that latter reality, Calipari's continued recruiting, was the single-biggest reason for Mulder's minutes not matching the early expectations.
Two months after Mulder pledged his future to the Cats, five-star Canadian guard Jamal Murray also inked with Kentucky. And at the same time, Murray announced he would be reclassifying to the Class of 2016.
With Tyler Ulis returning, five-star guard Isaiah Briscoe on board and Murray crashing the party, the widespread expectations for Mulder as a major player began to be downgraded. Still, perhaps, many held onto the belief that he could work his way into the rotation. But with Ulis playing almost the entirety of every contest and with Murray and Briscoe helping to form a three-guard lineup that was the very identity of Kentucky's '15-16 team, Mulder was relegated to a spot on the bench.
Shooters are often streaky, and even when they're not it's tough to expect a deep threat to step into the game in such a spot-duty situation and catch fire. Aside from a three-game stretch in early January against LSU, Alabama and Mississippi State, when Mulder played double-digit minutes in every contest, he was essentially an onlooker who never knew when Calipari might or might not call his number. And when he entered a game it was difficult for him to find a rhythm, with so little experience as part of any five-man lineup.
Even during that three-game stretch when Mulder saw more minutes he only connected on 3-of-13 three-point shots. He clearly had a green light to look for his shot when he was open, but for whatever reason, the shots didn't fall often enough.
Those increased minutes came with Hawkins out due to injury, and when the Cats' other returning senior guard returned to action, Mulder saw his minutes plummet.
Can Mulder change his on-court Kentucky legacy?
Whether Mulder is able to drastically change the narrative, which began last year, will be determined in time, and it's probably only partly in his control.
Ulis, Murray and Charles Matthews are gone with only Briscoe and Hawkins returning from last year's back court. If Briscoe and Hawkins were the Cats' main two guards going into the '15-16 season then necessity would be working in Mulder's favor.
Fortunately for Kentucky, and unfortunately for any of Mulder's understandable personal aspirations, the Cats' back court appears to be stacked. Briscoe and Hawkins are now joined by two more five-star guards in De'Aaron Fox and Malik Monk, with the two players already drawing rave reviews in early practice reports.
That both Briscoe and Hawkins were already ahead of Mulder in Calipari's mind last year means that Mulder is probably the Cats' fifth option at guard.
And that means it will be an uphill climb for minutes, especially for a player who did not prove he was capable of putting the ball on the floor or doing enough other things, besides his shooting specialty.
Mulder's best hope for minutes would probably rest on a possibility that wouldn't be good for Kentucky's team.
Only Derek Willis is a proven three-point shooting threat for the Wildcats, and because of that the three/stretch-four senior is likely to see a lot of court time.
Fox and Monk are widely viewed as capable but still unproven three-point shooters at the college level. Hawkins connected on 37-percent of his threes last season, which was actually a higher percentage than Mulder (17-percent). Some of that is attributable to the gap in the sample size, due to minutes, and it's still very likely that Mulder is indeed a better shooter than Hawkins, assuming he were to be in the flow of the game and the rotation.
Nonetheless, even if Fox, Monk, Briscoe and Hawkins struggle behind the three-point line, minutes could be tough to come by. After all, even in the worst-case scenario -- that the back court might struggle from deep (which is no certainty at all) -- those players are all much more regarded as overall players and likely contributors in almost every other part of the game.
However, even when Kentucky's guards (and team) struggled mightily from long range early last season, Calipari wasn't compelled to give Mulder a shot. Ulis started the season 21-of-75 , Hawkins wasn't a sustained threat from deep and Briscoe quickly established the reputation of a player who had lost confidence in his shot. Still, Mulder remained on the bench.
Those are tough realities for Mulder to overcome, but the past isn't always a perfect indicator of what's to come.
There could be an opportunity for Mulder to make a Hawkins-like impact in some games this season, at least in one respect. Hawkins nailed a trio of triples in Kentucky's narrow home win against Louisville, and even if Mulder's minute forecast is grim, it wouldn't be wise to altogether write off the possibility that circumstances could afford him key minutes, even in an important game.
Although Mulder wasn't a big offensive factor in the Cats' head-scratching loss against Auburn last year, he did snag three boards in only seven minutes. Calipari was pleased with that effort.
“I thought Mychal Mulder was really good today” Calipari said at the time. “… That’s how he’s played – the last game he didn’t play that way, Mississippi State – but now he went out and just said, ‘I got nothing to lose. I’m going to fly and run around and he did. He did. I was really pleased with him too.”
After that three-game stretch of an uptick in minutes, Marcus Lee said he wasn't surprised that Mulder had made some solid contributions. He also could relate, in a unique way, to how difficult it is to live up to expectations at Kentucky.
"Just like each and every one of us, as we go through being here at Kentucky you have to sit and wait for your opportunity," Lee said in mid-January. "When your opportunity comes, you gotta take it. It was a matter of time where he was able to get the opportunity and just-he’ll be able to strive with it.”
Lee's gone, but Mulder remains.
Briscoe's return and the signing of two more elite guards created a packed back court, and it's no secret that Calipari is comfortable with Hawkins on the court in pressure-packed moments. But injuries, struggles and the ebbs and flows of college basketball games mean that a scholarship player, even one acquainted with the bench, might still have the opportunity to serve as a spark when the team is playing below Calipari's expectations or when he's eager to spark the team.
That Mulder's greatest court time came in the middle of the season, even if by necessity, are a sign that he shouldn't be written off as a potential contributor even if he starts the season struggling to see action.
For now, reasonable expectations ought to be very modest due to the simple reality that Kentucky will once again have one of the nation's best back courts.