Kentucky basketball won gold at the GLOBL JAM. But what did we learn about these Wildcats?

A Kentucky basketball team that had been fully together for less than two weeks traveled north and won four games in five days at the GLOBL JAM in Toronto, capping the trip with a victory over host Canada to earn a gold medal Sunday night.

Under the circumstances, it’s hard to argue with the results.

And this UK squad — short on experience and overly reliant on freshmen — gave folks back home plenty to look forward to following a tumultuous offseason that had much of the fan base wondering when (or if) John Calipari would finally put together a full roster for the 2023-24 season.

Kentucky beat Canada 89-72 in Sunday’s gold medal game at the Mattamy Athletic Centre, the site of four victories — five, if you count UK’s win over Africa in a Tuesday scrimmage — during an international tournament in which the Wildcats were rarely tested.

Calipari had ample reason to be pleased with the week’s proceedings.

Fifth-year college player Antonio Reeves — a late returnee to Kentucky’s program — won GLOBL JAM most valuable player honors and led the Cats in scoring in all three games of pool play, averaging 23.0 points and hitting 18 of 32 threes (for 56.3 percent) during the event.

But Reeves, the only Wildcat back that played considerable minutes last season, was hardly alone as a game-changing presence.

Freshman point guard D.J. Wagner lived up to his reputation as an electric playmaker, while fellow freshman Justin Edwards showed flashes of greatness all week, culminating in a team-high 23 points (17 in the first half) Sunday night. Edwards and Wagner are both projected as NBA lottery picks next year.

Fifth-year player Tre Mitchell, who committed to Kentucky on June 26 — less than two weeks before the Cats flew to Toronto — following a late transfer from West Virginia proved from the get-go to be a steadying, do-whatever-is-needed-at-the-time presence for this young team. He averaged 14.5 points, 7.8 rebounds and 4.5 assists per game, playing more minutes than any Wildcat despite being around for only a handful of practices before the tournament began.

Sophomore wing Adou Thiero was a physical force, especially as a rebounder, looking like a completely different player after a freshman season spent mostly on the bench.

Kentucky Mr. Basketball Reed Sheppard was the Cats’ star in a rout of Canada on Thursday night and played heady, steady ball all week long. He led UK with 23 assists in the tournament.

Fellow freshman Rob Dillingham — another five-star recruit — provided glimpses of his shifty perimeter game, and late addition Jordan Burks (listed as a 6-9 guard) filled in at center for a team missing most of its frontcourt.

In a round of interviews with every scholarship player during the week before the GLOBL JAM began, there were two key themes: competitiveness and unselfishness. These Wildcats had lots of both, each of them said.

Back in Lexington, it was easy to brush off such talk. What would happen when these Cats met some decent competition and the young players used to getting theirs had to make real-time decisions? Well, they lived up to their own hype.

Even short-handed, this Kentucky team fought for rebounds and loose balls, hustled around the court and made plays to get themselves in transition. And the ball rarely stuck. In four games, the Wildcats managed to dish out 103 assists on 142 made baskets. Impressive numbers.

And the five-star freshmen seemed perfectly willing to play second fiddle.

When Edwards struggled from the floor in game one, he went out and grabbed a team-high nine rebounds. Wagner, touted as the No. 1 recruit in his class since he was in middle school, fought hard defensively and looked to find open teammates. Dillingham was underwhelming offensively and ceded minutes to others, but he was still all smiles and saying the right things during his media session late in the tournament, surely secure in the knowledge that his talent is there and his time will come.

A few weeks ago, it looked like depth would be a major concern for this bunch. After this trip, it’s more of a question of who will have to sit when Kentucky gets its big men back. And these four games in Canada gave Calipari plenty of looks at possible lineup combinations, including some intriguing small-ball options with Mitchell at the “5” and the bulked-up Thiero playing the “4.”

These are good problems for a Hall of Fame coach to spend the rest of his summer sorting out.

Of course, plenty of other questions remain unanswered.

For instance, how good, exactly, was Kentucky’s competition in Canada? On paper, these opponents were much better than the ones UK faced in the Bahamas last summer, and the eyeballs backed that up. But while all three rival teams featured quality college and overseas professional players, the Cats will see a much different caliber of opponent when they match up with such regular-season foes as Kansas, Gonzaga, Tennessee and several others.

The counter to that, of course, is that this UK team was able to dispatch quality competition with just “10 practices” — as Calipari said over and over again — behind them. Still, it’s worth wondering how the youngsters will look when playing against the best of college basketball.

Can this team shoot? The Cats let fly quite a bit at the GLOBL JAM, taking 117 threes over four games and making 44 of them — for a 37.6-percent clip. That’s good enough. It would be among the top rates in the Calipari era, but the 29.3 attempts per game surely won’t translate for a Kentucky coach that has never had a team shoot 20 per game in his 14 seasons at the helm.

Reeves has proven he can drain it, but he’s not going to hit 56 percent of them when the real season begins. Mitchell will help the Cats in that area, as he showed in these games (8-for-18 from deep). Nobody else shot better than 33 percent on this trip, and UK will almost certainly need some more consistency — at a decently high volume — during the actual season.

Perhaps the bigger question is part of the biggest question surrounding this UK team.

How good are Kentucky’s big men? And can they rebound and block shots well enough to provide a formidable presence in the post? None of that got answered on this trip.

That’s because five-star 7-footer Aaron Bradshaw — another possible one-and-done, NBA lottery pick — didn’t even make it to Toronto as he recovers from a procedure to repair his injured foot, and the Cats played all four GLOBL JAM games without sophomore center Ugonna Onyenso, who suffered an ankle injury in the team’s Tuesday scrimmage.

(Calipari said Sunday night of Onyenso: “He’s gonna be out awhile,” and confirmed that the recovery time will be longer than he originally thought, without providing further specifics.)

Bradshaw has perhaps as much upside as any recruit in the 2023 class. Onyenso has shown tantalizing potential as a shot-blocker in his brief time in college basketball so far. But both are considered possible projects this season, and the Wildcats will almost certainly need at least one of them to pan out to make a deep run in the 2024 NCAA Tournament.

“We got two 7-footers out. So we got a little deficiency in size, blocking shots and doing all that,” Calipari acknowledged after Kentucky’s gold medal victory Sunday night.

And the Wildcats’ play throughout the week showed that, when healthy, Bradshaw and Onyenso should have plenty of opportunities to protect the rim. Kentucky’s perimeter defense was often bad — terrible, at times — an understandable development for a team with so little practice time but also a genuine worry for an incredibly young roster with no reputable “lockdown defenders” in the backcourt.

These Cats tried on defense, yes, but trying only gets you so far, especially against the type of savvy veteran guards they’ll see starting in November. (Not to mention the opposing college coaches who will have ample time to watch video and exploit weaknesses.)

But perhaps the biggest takeaway — and likely one of the primary reasons Calipari seemed to be in such a good mood all week — was the high level of instinct that this team seems to possess. Even when shots didn’t fall and balls bounced the wrong way, the Wildcats — especially the young ones — often made the right decisions. It sure seems that these Cats know ball, and they have the physical tools, competitive drive and seeming unselfishness to go along with that feel for the game.

Calipari has achieved some pretty good things with players like that. And it sounds like he thinks this could be one of those teams.

“I’ve got a bunch of kids that play basketball,” he said Sunday night, “This isn’t wrestling. It’s not the decathlon. It’s not a track meet. This is basketball. And they’re skilled. So you may look at ’em and say, ‘They’re not very big. They’re skinny. They’re this …’ They’re basketball players.”

With Justin Edwards leading the way, Kentucky basketball wins GLOBL JAM gold medal

Box score from Kentucky basketball’s win over Canada in 2023 GLOBL JAM gold medal game

Three takeaways as Kentucky basketball captures the GLOBL JAM 2023 gold medal

‘Big bro’ of Kentucky basketball shows how much the Cats need him. ‘It all worked out.’

A new Adou for Kentucky basketball? Bulked-up Thiero ready for a bigger role in year two.

Reed Sheppard starred for Kentucky. His family was there to see it. ‘It means everything.’

Is this new Kentucky basketball team built to run? ‘We got dudes that can fly …’ 

Kentucky basketball trip gives Calipari an opening to boast. The Cats are big in Canada.

For one Kentucky basketball player, the GLOBL JAM could be a chance to show major progress