What’s different about Rob Dillingham? Why his evolution is so important for Kentucky.

As far as first impressions go, Rob Dillingham’s wasn’t the best.

The 6-foot-3 freshman guard made the trip to Canada with the rest of his Kentucky basketball teammates for the GLOBL JAM summer tournament, and — while basically everyone else on the squad had their fair share of shining moments — Dillingham was a disappointment.

His new fans might have been underwhelmed — and those performances likely lowered expectations among many — but no one in Kentucky’s camp seemed the least bit concerned.

Dillingham kept a smile on his face. John Calipari kept saying he’d be just fine, telling reporters that the 18-year-old had been “killing” fellow freshman stars D.J. Wagner and Reed Sheppard in the practices leading up to the trip.

More than three months later — at UK’s Blue-White Game on Saturday night — Dillingham had the opportunity to reintroduce himself. And he took advantage in a big way.

Right off the bat, the shifty guard provided the highlights: strong drives to the hoop, stepback jumpers, razzle-dazzle passes and energetic defense. By the end of the night, he had scored 40 points, dished out seven assists and come up with four steals. All were game highs.

At the GLOBL JAM, he was eighth in minutes played, seventh in points scored, last on the team in field-goal percentage and managed just one steal over four games.

What changed?

Well, for one, Dillingham is a much better player than he showed over those four days up north. And he’s shaping into an even better version of the talented prospect that showed up on UK’s campus a few months ago, both physically and mentally.

The physical transformation has been apparent.

As a recruit, Dillingham was listed at 6-2 and 160 pounds. The latter number was generous. At UK’s televised Pro Day event earlier this month, strength and conditioning coach Brady Welsh noted that Dillingham had added 24 pounds since arriving in Lexington early in the summer. When the official measurements from Pro Day came out a couple of days later, he was listed at 6-3 and 176 pounds.

For a player like Dillingham, the extra strength makes a big difference.

“He got beat up in Toronto,” Calipari said Saturday night. “Was he making layups in Toronto? Nah. Because he got bumped. And now, all of a sudden, he’s the one creating the bump, and playing though.”

Indeed, Dillingham took it right to the rack time and again during the Blue-White Game. Yes, he can score at a variety of angles. But he also initiated contact at the rim. And then, most importantly, he finished through that contact.

“When I was in Canada, I would get bumped, and then — since I wasn’t comfortable — I would stop and throw the ball,” Dillingham said. “But now it’s more like, ‘Play through the bump.’ That’s what he tells me every day. Just continue to play through the bump. And now I gained more weight, and it does feel way easier.”

Dillingham shot 12 free throws (and made nine) Saturday night. No one else on either team attempted more than seven freebies. He was 14-for-23 from the floor and 11-for-16 on 2-pointers, many of those shots coming on contested looks in traffic at the rim.

“Here’s what I liked: He was really efficient,” Calipari said.

And that’s been a work in progress, too.

Dillingham’s growing game

Dillingham came to UK with the reputation as one of the best and most exciting perimeter scorers in high school basketball. Part of that excitement was the unknown. What will he do next? It made him a must-watch, but it sometimes looked like even he didn’t know what was going to happen when he drove to the basket or left his feet.

He has the type of talent that Calipari is always searching for on the recruiting trail. And he has the type of tendencies that can drive Calipari crazy on the sidelines.

Calipari has coached a lot of five-star freshman guards whose mixtapes lit up YouTube and social media long before they landed in Lexington. John Wall was his first such player at UK, and Calipari said after Saturday’s scrimmage — while speaking about Dillingham — that he had to sit Wall down early in his freshman season and explain the way moving forward.

“You don’t need to play that way. You make one play, it’ll be on ESPN,” Calipari said. “One play. You don’t need to make 12.”

Dillingham has already heard that plenty. And even amid a 40-point performance on UK’s first night of tangible preseason basketball, he heard it some more. During the Blue-White Game, the UK coach got the red-hot freshman guard’s attention and told him something that made Dillingham smile afterward.

“He definitely told me to shoot the ball and stop messin’ with the ball,” he said with a laugh. “That’s his favorite line: stop messin’ with the ball.”

While pretty much everyone was talking about the points, Calipari focused on other stats.

The seven assists.

“Rob made some great passes late, when he could have tried to shoot it,” Calipari said. “When he did force it, I told him, ‘Why would you try to do that? You’re getting every shot you want. So don’t do that to your team. That’s disrespectful to the other guys.’ But he wants to be so good. He’s in the gym all the time.”

The four steals.

“My thing with him is, I want him to play like Tyler (Ulis) played — off the ball and on the ball,” he said. “Did he look that way tonight? Yeah.”

Ulis, now a student assistant on UK’s bench, was as pesky as it gets defensively. Dillingham filled passing lanes and got deflections, leading to fast-break points at the other end.

UK’s exciting backcourt

While Dillingham was all smiles during the Blue team’s 100-89 victory, ultra-competitive counterpart D.J. Wagner was chewing-glass mad — to paraphrase Calipari — as his star-studded White team floundered.

From here on out, they’ll be on the same side.

“We can play off of each other very well,” Wagner said over the summer of the dynamic. “We both like to hoop, so we’re just gonna feed off of each other.”

It should make for quite the show. Two playmaking stars who can do damage in a variety of ways. The Calipari era has featured a few such lineups. His first team, with John Wall and Eric Bledsoe wreaking havoc on the perimeter, immediately turned the program around, flipping a few years of frustration into legitimate national championship hopes. A decade later, his 2019-20 backcourt — which Calipari to this day claims could have won the NCAA title if not for the COVID-19 shutdown — featured Ashton Hagans, Immanuel Quickley and Tyrese Maxey, often all at once.

Kentucky’s guard play the past two seasons has been heavier on experience than the type of five-star freshman talent that peppered most of Calipari’s time here. Antonio Reeves is back, but the rest of this backcourt will consist of teenagers.

There will be growing pains, but Calipari’s hope is that the talent will win out in the end. Dillingham’s individual growth will be crucial to Kentucky’s season-long success as a team.

Calipari repeated his oft-used line Saturday night. When given the choice between talent and experience, he’s taking talent every time. Dillingham has plenty of that.

Now he has to figure out the rest.

“Before I got here, I was more of like a — I tried to make a play every time I got the ball,” he said. “And now, I just realized — playing with some of the guys every day — I don’t have to make a play every play. I can look for other people. I can throw the ball, just to give it up, sometimes.

“So really (I’m) just learning how to play with everybody, and learning how to jell together.”

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