Gonzaga's Kyle Wiltjer and Kentucky's Willie Cauley-Stein are both nominees for the John Wooden Award, and while neither seems likely to win it—this is the bummer part of playing college basketball at the same time as Jahlil Okafor and D'Angelo Russell—even being nominated seemed unlikely at the start of the pair's college careers. Wiltjer was part of an instantly legendary recruiting class at the University of Kentucky, and contributed as a freshman to the 2012 national championship team, if not in the sort of ways that get players nominated for postseason awards, or shouted about prior to the NBA Draft. Cauley-Stein arrived a year later and made a similarly low-key impact at first. They were just freshmen, after all, and not the sort of Superhuman Cyborg Dominato-bots that Anthony Davis and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist were at that age.This is an important thing to remember/impossible thing to forget when viewing the extremely silly videos that the two made that year, under the noms de YouTube "The Goonies." The plot of these videos, such as it can be said to exist, is simple—two extremely silly, extremely gangly goofballs drive around late on a Saturday night, taking periodic breaks to do the "Bernie" in a parking lot (reminder: made in 2012), sing along with whatever's on the radio, mess around with various video effects, and repeatedly reiterate/perform their definitively underclassmanian boredom.It is all very, very silly. The freshman-ness approaches overwhelming levels, here; it is not at all unhealthy and perhaps even preferable if you pass out during the bit in which the two freestyle over the beat to East Flatbush Project's "Tried By 12." Of course there is a part two:
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The two have grown significantly as players in the years since, each growing into the sort of specific stardom that should help them each make a very good living playing basketball over the next decade or so of their lives. We can only, and should all earnestly, hope that they're both still delightful goofballs.H/T to Adam Doster