If you needed any more proof that basketball is truly an international game, consider that Kentucky is hosting a 6-foot-9 prospect from New Zealand and that head coach John Calipari last week watched a 7-footer from Australia.
Tai Wynyard is a 16-year-old 2016 power forward from New Zealand who is on Kentucky’s campus now, and will trip to Villanova and Texas later this week. Isaac Humphries is the Australian 7-footer whom Calipari saw last week.
“He is a big, strong kid,” Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress.com told the Herald-Leader of Wynyard. “He’s very, very mature physically for his age — has really filled out. A lot of European players, people usually think about them as being skinny. He is thick. And he uses that to his advantage. He can go inside and just bully people — he can punish them around the rim because he’s so big and strong. And he’s also a big-time competitor. He’s a hustler.”
Givony compared Wynyard to Josh Harrellson, who played for Kentucky before joining the Knicks.
“He has good hands and good touch around the basket,” he said. “He’s not really an athlete, he’s not really explosive. … He’s a rebounder, he’s an inside guy, he’s a banger. He’s about like what Josh Harrellson was before he started shooting threes. Something like that.”
Kentucky will likely lose centers Karl-Anthony Towns, Willie Cauley-Stein and Dakari Johnson to the NBA Draft, and could lose freshman forward Trey Lyles, too.
Las Vegas center Stephen Zimmerman is their top center target in 2015, but Humphries and Wynyard are key prospects for the following year.
