Kadin Shedrick’s first two years at UVA saw him redshirted as a freshman, then suffer a bit of a setback with an illness that cost him eight games of his redshirt freshman year in 2020-2021 that undid a lot of the gains he’d made in the weight room.
You saw glimpses of what the 6’11” dynamo can be last season – 12 points on 5-of-8 shooting and 11 rebounds in the win at Syracuse, 12 points on 6-of-6 shooting in the win at Pitt, 16 points on 8-of-8 shooting and six rebounds in the upset win at Duke, 20 points on 8-of-9 shooting in the win at Louisville.
But there were too many games where foul trouble limited his minutes – he fouled out twice, and had eight other games with four fouls – and after back-to-back goose eggs in mid-January games with UNC and Virginia Tech, Shedrick lost the starting center job to Francisco Caffaro.
Tony Bennett went back to Shedrick as the starter at five in the ACC Tournament, and Shedrick was the starter in UVA’s season-opening 73-61 win over North Carolina Central on Monday, scoring 10 points on 3-of-6 shooting from the field, going 4-of-5 at the free-throw line, along with pulling down seven rebounds and blocking two shots in 27 minutes.
Fouls were still an issue – he picked up two in a 1:23 span early in the second half that sent him to the bench for a stretch that saw Virginia briefly lose what had been a 15-point lead before recovering down the stretch.
All told, though, it was a good start to the 2022-2023 season for Shedrick – maybe not the start of a breakout for the big guy, but something to build on.
“Kadin’s timing and shot blocking, just being an anchor for our defense, I think at times he has been, and I want to really see him establish that role, running the floor, doing the things that he’s shown improvement from the summer and this fall. I thought that was a good first step. I’d like to continue to see more of that, for sure,” Bennett said after the game on Monday.
Virginia is definitely a different team defensively with Shedrick at five. Caffaro is a solid position defender, but he’s only blocked 17 shots total in 895 minutes spanning 73 games in his four-year UVA career.
Shedrick is a classic rim protector who has 73 blocked shots in his 841 career minutes over 43 games at UVA.
Shedrick is also much more of a weapon on the offensive end, shooting 64.1 percent from the floor a year ago, most of that from close in – according to Hoop-Math.com, 66.7 percent of Shedrick’s shot attempts were at the rim in 2021-2022, and he converted 75 percent on those opportunities.
Shedrick worked on his mid-range game in the offseason, and showed some of his newfound range on the trip to Italy.
He missed both of his jumpers in Monday’s win, and had to overcome a slow start – he had two points and two rebounds in 12 first-half minutes – before a big second half.
“In the first half, I got off to a slower start than I would’ve liked, but I think I was still doing a lot of things that helped the team defensively,” Shedrick said. “Obviously, I’m out there to play good defense, and offense will come. I think that showed in the second half, where the offense improved, and I continued to play defense.”
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Chris Graham
