John Calipari shares thoughts on Kentucky MBB as team heads to Toronto
The ‘Cats are headed north of the border!
On Sunday morning, the Kentucky men’s basketball team departed Lexington for Toronto, Canada ahead of this week’s 2023 GLOBL Jam Tournament. The Wildcats will represent Team USA in a four-game setting against international competition. Kentucky’s opening game takes place on Wednesday, July 12 at 1:30 p.m. EST against Team Germany.
Kentucky will participate in three pool play games — July 12, 13, and 15 — before finishing off the trip with a medal game on Sunday, July 16. All games will be available for viewing on the CBS Sports Network.
Prior to the team’s departure, head coach John Calipari shared on social media Saturday night some of his thoughts on the state of the program with the Big Blue Nation.
We had our last practice in Lexington today before we leave for Toronto and it was great to have Jim Host and PG Peeples join us! For all his fans, PG looked great and had a clean bill of health.
Tonight we’ll have a team dinner and talk about our upcoming trip. We have a team right now that is learning, having fun, encouraging each other and being really coachable. Practice has been a lot of fun so far and they are working hard.
But we are heading to play in an event that will require us to be even more physical and compete even harder against these older players. There will be grabbing and physicality. That’s FIBA basketball. Will we be physical enough and have enough fight to compete? Baylor went 1-4 in this event last year so we know the challenge.
There’s going to be a lot of randomness to how we play but we are a really unselfish group and can score in a variety of ways. I’m so excited to learn more about our team!!
John Calipari, Kentucky men’s basketball head coach
Kentucky isn’t the first college team selected to play in this event. As Calipari mentioned, the Baylor Bears participated in the GLOBL Jam last summer, posting a 1-4 record along the way. The Wildcats will hope for better results against the professional competition, which will feature rosters of players up to 23 years of age.
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This will be the Big Blue Nation’s first chance to watch the 2023-24 version of the Wildcats, which have only been practicing for a few weeks so far. There are eight new faces on this year’s roster, seven of them freshmen and one being a graduate transfer from West Virginia, Tre Mitchell.
Unfortunately, Kentucky will be without five-star freshman center Aaron Bradshaw, who will stay back in Lexington as he rehabs from foot surgery that he underwent last month. That leaves sophomore big man Ugonna Onyenso as the team’s lone available center in Canada. This event will be a terrific learning experience for the team as a whole, especially the freshmen.
It’s almost time for college basketball in July, folks.
2023 GLOBL JAM Team USA (Kentucky) TV Schedule
- July 12: Team USA (Kentucky) vs. Team Germany, 1:30 p.m. ET live on CBS Sports Network
- July 13: Team USA (Kentucky) vs. Team Canada, 8:00 p.m. ET (tape delay July 14 at 12:00 a.m. ET on CBS Sports Network)
- July 15: Team USA (Kentucky) vs. Team Africa, 1:30 p.m. ET live on CBS Sports Network
- July 16: Gold Medal Game (if Team USA is playing), 8:00 p.m. ET live on CBS Sports Network
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