Kentucky Misses Out on NCAAs — Would Green Have Made a Difference?

The point guard didn't advance his career much at Washington while the Wildcats floundered without him.

With a 74-73 loss on Thursday to Mississippi State, Kentucky missed out on the NCAA tournament for the first time in eight seasons, and just the second in John Calipari's 12-year stint as coach.

The Wildcats struggled to score throughout the season and finished a miserable 9-16 record.

A reflex question is this: Would Kentucky have ended in such sorry shape had Quade Green stayed put?

Is it possible Calipari's crew never would have missed a postseason beat had the 5-star guard from Philadelphia not left for the University of Washington, where he played the last season and a half.

"We were a couple of wins away from being a team; even with a bad record, we were right there," Calipari said of his team's NCAA chances. "But at the end of the day, you've got to win games and you've got to be tough and you've got to play winning basketball. We were never able to get fully engaged in that."

For the 2017-18 season, Calipari turned the lead playmaking duties over to the 6-foot Green, then a freshman, starting him 13 times over the first 16 games.

Green, however, wanted to score more than dish. He missed three games with a back injury and Calipari took the opportunity to turn the team over to another promising but then somewhat unknown freshman, the 6-foot-6 Shai Gilgeous-Alexander from Canada.

Gilgeous-Alexander was so good — scoring 30 points one night against Vanderbilt and collecting 10 assists on another against Ole Miss — he left for the NBA following the season and he was the 11th player taken in the 2018 draft.

The following year, Green got beat out by 6-foot-5 freshman Keldon Johnson, backing up the younger player for nine games before deciding he'd enough of the Wildcats bench. Johnson went pro after a season in Lexington, going as the 29th player in the 2019 draft.

Green ended up at Washington, joining Mike Hopkins, a familiar face from Syracuse who previously had recruited him.

For the only time in his college career during the 2019-20 season, Green was a truly adept point guard. Over 15 games for the Huskies, he averaged 11.6 points and 5.2 assists per game. He had great big men to play off of in Isaiah Stewart and Jaden McDaniels.

He blew all of this career-building momentum by becoming academically ineligible. His absence not only sent the Huskies into an irreversible tailspin but it likely hurt his pro-basketball prospects in the process.

This season, Green topped the Huskies in scoring at 15.4 ppg and in assists at 3.6, but the Huskies had no discernible big men to help him. The senior ended up trying to do everything himself. With a 5-21 team, he wasted a season in Seattle.

Green has to wonder what might have happened had he swallowed his pride, hung with Kentucky and ultimately worked his way back in the lineup and his coach's good graces.

Calipari has to wonder that, too.

Follow Dan Raley of Husky Maven on Twitter: @DanRaley1 and @HuskyMaven

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