Physically, Willie Cauley-Stein was on the bench watching his teammates during their run to the national championship game. Mentally, emotionally, psychologically, he was nowhere in the building after injuring his left ankle against Louisville in the Sweet 16.”The hardest thing was just staying with everybody, staying with my teammates, making sure that I’m still there, because honestly I didn’t feel like I was there,” Cauley-Stein said in preseason interview last month. “The best thing is like the stories after the game. Like, oh yeah, we did this and this. When you’re not on the floor, you don’t really experience that. You get to watch it. Everybody else watches it. But to be there and (not be able to play), that was the hardest part.”His teammates did everything they could to make him feel a part of the team. They included him in all the normal team activities and vowed to win a championship for him. Cauley-Stein did everything he could to stay connected as well. He was at every practice, every team meeting and every meal as his teammates got closer and closer to the ultimate prize. He asked UK’s sports video team to give him a camera so he could shoot footage from the sidelines. His footage from the bench with a Go Pro camera during the Michigan and Wisconsin games made for some of the most memorable moments of the run. The sophomore forward even went as far as to make himself available for the extended media interviews during the postseason when he very well could have declined because of the injury. Cauley-Stein just wanted to feel like he was still a part of the team — which he was. But in so many ways, he felt like his bad break on the court had broken him away from the team.”(My teammates) would come into the room or I would hobble into their room and mess around and stuff, but it was hard,” Cauley-Stein said. “They were the most important games. It was hard to, like, feel – I would feel the same way if I was them. You got business to take care of; I wouldn’t want to entertain me neither.”When his teammates fell one win short of a magical national championship, Cauley-Stein took the loss as hard as anyone. He felt like he could have made a difference in the outcome.”We all forgot that we would’ve won (if he didn’t get hurt),” John Calipari said. “The thing that we forgot (is), what would we have done with Willie playing? I mean, it would have been different. Even the endings of games wouldn’t have been where they were. I mean, Willie was a dominant (force). Willie was a shot blocker, a guy that could change the game on both ends.”

To be there and not be able to help, especially after what he went through in his first season at Kentucky when the Cats lost in the first round of the NIT, made the whole experience especially difficult. “I think the circumstances were the reason why it was hard,” Cauley-Stein said. “We were in the Final Four. … That’s what you play for. That’s what you come to college for besides getting your degree. … To have that taken away from you is really humbling.” After a long and frustrating summer that kept Cauley-Stein on the sidelines, he was finally cleared to resume full basketball activities in mid-September. “It’s been a long 20 weeks,” Cauley-Stein said. “I hate waiting around. That’s the worst part is just being patient about it. There’s days where you feel like you can go out there and dunk and do windmills and stuff like that, and then there’s days where like right after you feel like and you didn’t even do anything and you step out of bed and be like, ‘Why, what’s different today than yesterday? I felt so good yesterday.’ I’m really eager.”His eagerness was on display when Coach Cal watched him play a few weeks ago. Cauley-Stein, who has always shown signs of being a future lottery pick, reminded his head coach of his potential after missing the entire Bahamas trip.”Willie’s playing like he’s a 3,” Calipari said of the 7-footer. “Like, we throw it ahead, he’s in the open court, crossing, throwing balls out, and I’m like, ‘Holy jeez.’ “Undoubtedly, the injury in March played a part in Cauley-Stein’s return for his junior season. When Calipari called individual meetings with all of his players after the championship game to congratulate each of them on their year and discuss their future, the last thing he expected Cauley-Stein to tell him was that he was coming back.”I want to tell you I’m proud of you,” Calipari told Cauley-Stein in the meeting. “I remember going to your high school the first time. Remember what I saw you doing? ‘You saw me playing kickball.’ And the second time I saw you? ‘I don’t know.’ You were playing tennis. So I didn’t even know if you liked basketball. Now you’re this.” As far as Coach Cal knew, it was time to get Cauley-Stein healed and ready for the NBA Draft. The next day Cauley-Stein came back and asked to meet with Calipari.”I said sure,” Calipari said. “He said, ‘I want to come back.’ I went, ‘What? Why do you want to come back?’ He told me and I said OK.”The reason was twofold.For one, Cauley-Stein’s injury and subsequent surgery was going to prevent him from working out for NBA teams before the draft. Cauley-Stein was unsure of how that would affect his draft stock.”That’s one reason why I came back is just the unknown,” he said. “I feel like I’m way better than what I was going to get drafted.”Part of it was Cauley-Stein just isn’t ready to grow up yet. He seems to genuinely enjoy being a kid and being in college. “Especially now, being a junior, you’re older, everybody knows who you are,” Cauley-Stein said. “When I came in, nobody knew who I was, so it’s cool like that. I love the fans around here. They’re so fun. I enjoy messing around with them.”While some of his peers are quick to sign lucrative contracts and fast forward to the rest of their lives, Cauley-Stein would prefer to put time on hold to sit back and enjoy what he’s got. Perhaps what was taken away from him during the tournament run gave him a different perspective on what it is he has.”I just enjoy it,” Cauley-Stein said. “You don’t get them back. You don’t get these years back. You’ve got to enjoy them while you’ve got them.”Ironically, given his reasoning to stay, he sounds so grown up.When Cauley-Stein arrived on campus two years ago, he didn’t know who he was or where he was going. A bit of a free spirit, Cauley-Stein tried to involve himself in anything and everything he could. His wide range of interests and style immediately made him a darling with the media, but some of those eclectic tastes, like his love for tattoos, his distinctive clothing and his ever-changing hairstyle, have also drawn the scrutiny of a faction of the fan base.Fair or unfair, it has led some to wonder whether he is fully committed to basketball. That notion used to poke at Cauley-Stein, but as he’s grown up, he’s learned to deal with it and ignore it.”I’m just more comfortable with being who I am … and what it is to be here,” Cauley-Stein said. “That’s really all it is is being comfortable in your skin. That’s how you try to get the best results of what you’re trying to do.”During his freshman season, when UK struggled to meet expectations and a minority of fans lashed out at Cauley-Stein on social media, he got frustrated and temporarily deleted his Twitter account. Now Cauley-Stein either brushes it off or has fun with it. “You don’t really know how crazy your fan base is until you have a bad season here,” Cauley-Stein said. “You have a bad season here, it’s rough. You’ve still got thousands of people behind you, but there’s the 100 that’s killing you. Like, yo, why are fans killing you like this? But then they’re not the real fans. They’re just dudes that’s mad that you’re losing. And then you got 2,000 people on Twitter that’s really hyping you up, that are really behind you no matter what you do.”That’s what’s fascinating about the fans here. They’re literally behind you 100 percent whether you’re dying your hair blonde or you’ve got hundreds of tattoos or anything. Anything you do they’re on your side and they’re on your campaign, and that’s what I love about them.”Calipari, who, remember, recruited Cauley-Stein when he was playing just about every sport other than basketball, would never discourage the junior forward to narrow his interests, but Cauley-Stein said that outside of a new hobby of his – designing, painting and customizing sneakers – he’s dialed back some of his extracurricular activities to focus more on basketball. Coach Cal is fine with whatever Cauley-Stein does so long as he stays “in the circle.””You can never lead the circle from outside the circle,” Calipari said. “You got to be in this and they all got to know that you’re in here with us. If you try to separate yourself as a player from the pack, you can never serve them, you can never lead them. They don’t want to hear it. They think you’re about yourself. So being a free spirit and how he is, he’s a good kid. He’s just got to make sure he’s inside this circle of what we’re doing because if we’re to be really special … someone has got to be to that player.”Calipari believes that could be Cauley-Stein.