Quickley’s Faith Rewarded with SEC POY Honors
It’s not that Immanuel Quickley felt doubted. It was more that he felt like no one was thinking about him at all.
That feeling, returning from to Kentucky after a solid if unspectacular freshman season, was never far from Quickley’s mind last summer. It fueled him through early morning workouts, through late-night shooting sessions. It motivated him to take no days off in preparing for his sophomore year.
On Tuesday, he was rewarded with Southeastern Conference Player of the Year honors.
It’s an award that he didn’t doubt he could win. It was more that he never thought about winning it at all.
“One of my goals was to make first team,” Quickley said. “But to win SEC Player of the Year, I don’t think a lot of people thought that, that I would be able to do something like this.”
Ironically, the person who told Quickley the news that SEC coaches had named him the league’s best was one of the first to think it was possible. A little over two weeks ago, Nick Richards stepped to the podium at a pregame press conference to announce his support for Quickley’s postseason awards campaign. On Tuesday, he delivered the news of its success as Quickley tried to take a test.
“We were in class and I just looked on my phone and I just saw that he got SEC Player of the Year and I was so happy for him I think I shouted his name out in class while everybody was still working,” Richards said. “He really deserves it. He worked his butt off the whole entire year. I’m just proud of him.”
Richards himself had a case for the award, but settled for All-SEC First Team honors from both the coaches and Associated Press. Tyrese Maxey was named to the All-SEC Second Team and SEC All Freshman Team by coaches, while Ashton Hagans was on the coaches’ SEC All-Defensive Team.
“I’m so happy for Immanuel, Nick, Tyrese, Ashton and really all of our guys,” said John Calipari, who himself was named SEC Coach of the Year by his peers and USBWA District IV Coach of the Year. “This group has been so much fun to be around because they want to be coached and they’re all pushing one another to be better every day. To me, these awards are as much about our team’s success than anything else. When the team succeeds, individuals benefit. When individuals sacrifice themselves for the team, everyone shares in the success. Congratulations to all of our award winners and their teammates.”
Of course, Quickley is the headliner, and deservedly so.
A year removed from averaging 5.2 points on 37.2% shooting, Quickley emerged as the go-to scorer on the SEC’s regular-season championship team. He is scoring 16.1 points per game entering the postseason and shooting a team-best 42.8% from 3 (41.6% overall). Those numbers even sell him a bit short, as he is averaging 18.6 points and shooting 47.2% from 3 during an ongoing 20-game streak of double-figure scoring. Kentucky is 17-3 over that time, reemerging as a top-10 team and national-title contender in the process.
“Really just a credit to my offseason,” Quickley said. “I think a lot of people didn’t expect me to have this type of year. But if you ask the people around me and myself, I expected to have this type of year.”
Even so, Quickley faced one final hurdle: demonstrated performance, to borrow one of Coach Cal’s favorite phrases.
“Probably mentally was the biggest thing,” Quickley said. “Just knowing how mentally strong you have to be to play here. Playing through mistakes was a big part of my sophomore year coming back. That was probably it, was probably the mental part. I knew I was good enough. Just seeing the in-game success was a big part.”
Quickley has seen plenty of that now. There were the eight 20-point games, highlighted by a 30-point performance at Texas A&M. He had too many clutch shots to count and has been the best player on the floor in many a big win, but on Saturday he ceded the stage to his teammates.
He fouled out in the early stages of a comeback bid at Florida, leaving his teammates to overcome the last 12 points of a deficit that had once reached 18. That’s exactly what they did, with the SEC Player of the Year watching from the bench and Ashton Hagans back in Lexington.
“I think it was really good for our team,” Quickley said. “Guys like Nate (Sestina) and Keion (Brooks Jr.) and Johnny (Juzang) had to play really big minutes, make really big plays. So that was big for us and I think that’ll help us going into the tournament as well, giving them a lot of confidence.”
Nonetheless, teams aren’t going to stop game-planning for Quickley. He expects to be a marked man when No. 8/7 Kentucky opens the SEC Tournament as the top seed at 1 p.m. ET on Friday against either Alabama or Tennessee, but that won’t be a whole lot different than the last month.
Neither will Quickley’s goals for his team.
“The target will be pretty cool, but it’s a team game,” Quickley said. “At the end of the day, we’re still trying to accomplish something special as a team. That’s pretty much what we’re trying to do.”
