Robert Dillingham has been hitting the weights since GLOBL JAM

Robert Dillingham must’ve heard the talk from his GLOBL JAM performance earlier in the summer.

The five-star freshman guard showed moments of the showstopping brilliance that made him such a high-profile recruit in high school, but ultimately struggled against the physicality of so many older grown men. The shifty 6-foot-1 guard was held to 31 percent shooting up in Canada and got to the free-throw line just three times across four games. He came to Kentucky generously listed at 160 pounds by the team’s official website, and it was clear from watching him on the floor that number might be a bit inflated.

Although Dillingham wasn’t the only young Wildcat struggling against bigger and stronger competition, it was the most noticeable in his game. What worked in high school — speeding past slower defenders with an array of dribble moves and quick twitches — was now half as effective against dudes in their early 20s. To Dillingham’s credit, he’s said all the right things since arriving on campus, but talk is just talk. If he wants to play a significant role on this season’s Kentucky team, he’d have to get stronger.

And that’s exactly what he’s done. With the help of strength and conditioning coach Brady Welsh, Dillingham has bulked up. He went from 155 pounds to 172 pounds throughout the summer — 17 pounds of added muscle. Head coach John Calipari said at his Fantasy Camp over the weekend that Dillingham has put on 13 pounds since GLOBL JAM, which wrapped up six-ish weeks ago with Kentucky winning gold. That doesn’t happen by accident.

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Don’t think Calipari didn’t notice Dillingham’s struggles against the international competition — he certainly did. But it was actually Dillingham who approached Calipari after GLOBL JAM to tell his head coach that he would put on more muscle before the regular season tipped off. Mission accomplished.

“We showed this summer what we can do. Now let’s get stronger, let’s get more consistent shooting the ball, skill-wise. Young players are not sturdy enough to be really consistent,” Calipari said on SportsCenter earlier this week. “That’s why it’s really important, the summer and when they return to campus in the fall. This is a good group in that way. I mean, they love being in the gym. I go into my office, and I look out there, four guys are in there playing. And they play a lot of pickup, which is really important too.

“The thing that was important, it was 23 and under. So you had a lot of professional players playing and they got to see, ‘Physically, I’ve got to get stronger,’ you know? ‘I’ve got to be able to play through bumps. I’ve got to be able to play at the rim, get hit, and still make shots.'”