John Calipari after win over Canada: We've got really good basketball players

Kentucky, representing Team USA, beat Canada soundly on Thursday in an exhibition, 93-69. After the contest, the latest of several for the Kentucky men’s basketball team at the GLOBL JAM in Toronto, Ontario, head coach John Calipari raved about the players on his team.

He’s always said he’ll take talent over experience, and the 2023-24 squad seems to be a sterling example of that theory. And after watching his team play a handful of exhibitions, the long-time head coach was impressed by the versatility of this squad.

“You know, the thing that we have: We have really good basketball players. They’re basketball players. And so you’ve got five guys at all times on the floor that can pass and shoot and drive and make decisions. It’s my old way of playing. Which is getting in space, space the court and you fly — which is probably most of my career, 90 percent of my career coaching that way. But you gotta have a bunch of guys that can play basketball,” Calipari said.

He was specifically impressed with the performance of freshman Reed Sheppard after the Canada matchup. In about 25 minutes on the floor, Sheppard scored 14 points to go with two rebounds, four assists, four steals and two blocks. He was also 2-of-4 from 3-point range.

Calipari getting asked about Sheppard bled into the “really good basketball players” comment, but not before he complimented the freshman.

“Oh, was he good today,” Calipari said, a tone of pleasant surprise in his voice.

He analyzed what made Sheppard so effective before discussing some other performances by the likes of fellow freshman Robert Dillingham and West Virginia transfer Tre Mitchell.

“Defensively getting his hands on balls,” Calipari said of Sheppard. “You notice, when he’s in, people fly. Because they know they’re probably going to get it. But, Robert had eight assists, one turnover. I gotta get him to where he knows when to go and when to just get rid of it, but he’s going to be fine because he fights like heck on defense. Justin [Edwards] made shots today. Tre, you just notice, he’ll do whatever it is. Just, and a dude did what he’s been doing. Justin was better.”

With such an embarrassment of talent, Calipari has been flipping around the starting lineups throughout the exhibition series in Canada. He plans to keep it up going forward.

‘I’m going to start Justin next game and have DJ [Wagner Jr.] and Robert up, start, and probably Justin. Those three, and Jordan [Burks]. And either Tre or Adou [Thiero], one of those two would start. It’d probably be Tre. So kind of flipping lineups is what I’ve done the entire time we’ve been here,” Calipari said.