John Calipari comments on his team ahead of GLOBL JAM

The Kentucky Wildcats’ first game of the 2023 GLOBL Jam Tournament comes Wednesday at 1:30 pm ET against Team Germany.

Thanks to another summer hoops event, the Kentucky fanbase will have a lot to look forward to, though the team won’t be fully healthy due to freshman big man Aaron Bradshaw being injured.

Before heading up north to Canada, Kentucky head coach John Calipari shared his thoughts on social media.

“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!!”

As mentioned in what Calipari said, Baylor played last year in the event going 1-4, and with a lot of new players on this year’s team, it will be a learning experience. The team will have seven new freshmen on the roster, with Bradshaw not playing in the event due to his injury. Along with two sophomores who did not get a lot of playing time next year and a graduate transfer from West Virginia who was a late add. The only player familiar with this year’s team and got a lot of playing time last year is Antonio Reeves.

Speaking of Reeves, he won the MVP of the Big Blue Bahamas Tour last year, where he averaged 17 points per game during the games last year. He also shot over 50% from deep, going 14/27 from behind the arc.

It will be a learning experience for this team, but it will be interesting to see how the freshmen play along with Kentucky having one center in Ugonna Onyenso, who did not see the floor much last year.