WKU Basketball: Kenny Cooper’s Experience Needed Soon For Tops Success
As Western Kentucky took on Tennessee Tech for their season opener Tuesday night, only one player for the Tops was in street clothes and…
As Western Kentucky took on Tennessee Tech for their season opener Tuesday night, only one player for the Tops was in street clothes and that was transfer point guard Kenny Cooper.
The 2019–2020 basketball season is officially underway and even though the NCAA has cleared waivers for countless other D-1 players before the season started, WKU has been left waiting on them to clear their point guard. Kenny Cooper announced he was transferring from Lipscomb in April and almost eight months later, nothing. With the Bison’s head coach Casey Alexander leaving for his alma mater Belmont, Cooper can transfer to another school but with him just being a regular senior and not a redshirt senior (true grad transfer) the NCAA still has to look at it.
Not only is this frustrating for coach Stansbury to once again start a new season without a senior point guard (Lamonte Bearden had to sit until January because of academics last season) but you can tell the team needs Cooper.
Taveion Hollingsworth started at the point guard position for WKU against Tennessee Tech and you can tell it’s not his natural position. Hollingsworth is a great scorer and player off the ball but moving him to a position where he needs to set the pace of the offense and pass the ball with precision, he struggled. He finished with 11 points and three assists but also had five turnovers with most of them being him trying to thread the needle with some tight passes and failing to get the ball to Charles Bassey in the paint. He also seemed to slow the pace at times as well when they should’ve kept attacking which allowed Tennessee Tech to come back within ten points after being down by 21 in the second half.
Freshman point guard Jordan Rawls had some good flashes of what we could expect from him with four points on 2-of-5 shooting but coach Stansbury doesn’t want to completely throw him to the wolves just yet. Don’t want to have a Dalano Banton-esque situation again. If Rawls can get more comfortable with the offense that will help but there is still a void for a seasoned leader on the roster without Cooper.
Kenny Cooper is a pass-first point guard and would help with the pace of the offense. I imagine he’d have a lot better luck getting the ball to Bassey down low and just by having him out there would help with the team’s offense and depth. It’s his natural position and he’s shown he can lead a team. Last year at Lipscomb he helped the Bison get all the way to the NIT Championship game which was a big accomplishment for their university. They were a great team and could’ve beat a team or two in the NCAA Tournament had they won their conference tournament but they bought in to the NIT and made a huge run.
We saw a lot of what we had seen last season with the offense stalling out and having some shot clock violations because they aren’t able to get the ball to Bassey or move the ball at all. It was a night and day difference with the team once Bearden was back to lead last season but waiting until January isn’t going to help the team now. It sadly may become the reality for coach Stansbury once again and with a loaded non-conference schedule, they can’t really afford to drop any games if they want a chance of getting an at-large bid. Of course, we talked about this last season and it never happened but this team has more potential to accomplish it, especially if they could pull an upset against Louisville in Nashville on Black Friday.
I’m not sure if Kenny Cooper would fix every issue the team will have but having a seasoned point guard on the floor will get the team more prepared by conference play and give them more experience now. Worst case scenario and Cooper isn’t cleared at all, coach Stansbury can redshirt him and hope that they can get cleared by the 2020–2021 season but this team definitely has a win-now mentality and they should. With a roster full of talented and experienced players they can potentially end the six-year NCAA Tournament drought the Tops have had this year.
Hollingsworth will likely see the most minutes at point guard and I hope he gets better until Cooper is hopefully cleared but once again, we’ll all have to wait for however long it takes the NCAA to stop dragging their feet and clear him. Whether it’s tomorrow or January, none of us can pinpoint when it will happen but I still look for this team to be competitive and win games without him but having him out there would most certainly help.