No cream puffs in Canada. Kentucky’s opponents in GLOBL JAM are tall, tested and tough.

If Kentucky struggles during this week’s basketball trip to Canada, you’re sure to hear one statistic over and over (and over) again from John Calipari.

When the Baylor Bears played in last year’s inaugural GLOBL JAM — the event UK will be competing in starting Wednesday — that program left Toronto with a 1-4 record.

Calipari was quick to mention that in his first offseason press conference a couple of weeks ago.

“There’s a chance we go 0-4,” the Kentucky coach said, setting low expectations for his young Wildcats ahead of their summer sojourn up north.

That Baylor team, Calipari will be just as quick to point out, ended the 2022-23 season ranked No. 11 in the Associated Press poll and earned a No. 3 seed in this year’s NCAA Tournament.

So, if the Cats lose some games this week, it won’t necessarily be time to hit the panic button.

And there’s a real chance the Cats could indeed lose some games this week.

As far as raw talent, no team in this GLOBL JAM should match Kentucky’s star-studded roster, led by the nation’s No. 1-ranked recruiting class, a group consisting of multiple players projected to be lottery picks in next year’s NBA Draft.

But raw talent alone probably won’t be enough this time around.

Compared to Kentucky’s offseason exhibition trip to the Bahamas last summer — the one that resulted in four blowout victories going the Wildcats’ way — this one should be much more of a struggle.

One major difference: Last season’s Kentucky team had several returning players, including national player of the year Oscar Tshiebwe, veteran point guard Sahvir Wheeler and key forward Jacob Toppin, among others.

This UK team has just one player that played major minutes for the Cats last season — fifth-year guard Antonio Reeves, a transfer to Kentucky last year — and only three returning scholarship players overall.

Some of the new Cats — there are eight UK newcomers, in total — arrived on campus in the final days of May. Others got to Lexington even more recently than that. When a reporter prefaced a question to Calipari two Fridays ago that his team had only a couple of weeks to prepare for the trip, the Kentucky coach corrected him quickly.

“Ten days, Calipari said. “Ten days. …

“How much would you put in? Let’s do a little pick-and-roll. Let’s space the court. What would you do defensively?”

Man-to-man (and hope for the best?), the reporter suggested.

“Or play zone,” Calipari replied, offering a possible scenario. “‘We can’t guard anybody.’”

Rather than wins and losses, Calipari said he’d judge his trip on other things. “Did we learn? Did we get better? Do we all walk away and say, ‘I’m loving this, we’re all gonna be fine’?”

The other major difference from last year’s Bahamas trip will be the competition.

Last summer, UK won its first three summer games by 52, 62 and 62 points, respectively. The fourth and final one — against the Bahamas National Select Team — was close early before the Wildcats blew the doors off the home team and won by 24 points.

It was known going into that trip that the competition would be lacking.

For the most part, the opposing players were undersized and athletically inferior. In one game — a 102-40 victory over a team from Mexico — the other squad had just one player taller than 6-foot-5 (and even he was only 6-7). Kentucky won the rebounding battle that day 65-22.

That’s highly unlikely to happen this time.

UK’s competition in the GLOBL JAM — an event for players 23 years old and under — will feature a whole lot of basketball pros with the type of size, strength and experience that the Cats will see throughout the upcoming 2023-24 season.

Calipari said a couple of weeks ago that he likes the way his new team is competing. He’s intrigued by the way his guards are playing off of each other. He has players like Justin Edwards and D.J. Wagner that are more likely than not to be top-10 NBA picks a year from now. Others up and down the roster could very well join them on draft night 2024.

“But this isn’t me taking a team to the Bahamas, putting the other teams together knowing we’re winning by 30 and we’re team-building,” Calipari said. “... This is different.”

Kentucky vs. Germany

The Wildcats, who will be representing the United States in this international event, tip things off against a team from Germany on Wednesday afternoon. Ten of the 12 players on that roster are pros — many playing in the top level of German basketball — and the other two are Division I college players in the United States.

Six of the German players are listed at 6-7 or taller, and a couple are 7-footers.

Opposing size should be something to watch in all of Kentucky’s games this week, especially with incoming freshman Aaron Bradshaw out with an injury. That 7-footer’s absence leaves Ugonna Onyenso (6-11) and Tre Mitchell (6-9) as the only real frontcourt players available to Calipari and his coaching staff this week.

One of Germany’s big men is 7-footer Bent Leuchten, who averaged 9.3 points and 5.7 rebounds in 18.0 minutes per game as a sophomore for UC Irvine last season.

Topping the list of players to watch might be Johannes Patrick, a 6-foot guard who averaged 14.5 points, 4.1 rebounds and 4.2 assists per game at the highest level of German pro ball last season.

Another intriguing player will be Simonas Lukosius, a 6-6 guard with a do-everything reputation who averaged 11.6 points, 4.0 rebounds and 2.9 assists per game at Butler during 2022-23. He also made 38 percent of his three-point attempts, with 59 makes in 32 games.

Lukosius hit the transfer portal this spring and ended up at Cincinnati, where he’ll be teammates with ex-Cat CJ Fredrick next season.

Every player on the German team is at least 21 years old (or will be by the end of 2023). Of course, most of Kentucky’s players are still teenagers.

Kentucky vs. Canada

The Thursday night matchup will pit UK versus a team of Canadians, and the home squad has plenty of veteran players with high-level college basketball experience.

Kellen Tynes, a 6-3 guard, averaged 14.3 points per game at Maine last season.

Joel Brown, another 6-3 guard, has started 93 games at California and transferred to Iona this offseason.

Marko Maletic, a 6-6 guard, led LIU in scoring during 2022-23, averaging 15.9 points per game and hitting 38.8 percent from three-point range, averaging nearly three makes per game.

Nana Owusu-Anane, a 6-8 forward, was a team captain at Brown as a sophomore last season, averaging 10.3 points and a team-high 8.2 rebounds, the latter stat good enough for second in the Ivy League.

Addison Patterson (6-6 forward) is a former top 100 U.S. recruit who was a junior-college star last season and will spend his next one at Northwestern State. Jahmyl Telfort (6-6 guard) has been a double-figure scorer in all three of his seasons at Northeastern. And Enoch Boakye (6-10 center) was once on UK’s recruiting radar. He played sparingly at Arizona State last season and will be with Fresno State for 2023-24.

This team isn’t huge on star power, but there’s plenty of experience here, and the rest of the roster features a mix of Canadian pros and college players.

Kentucky vs. Africa

Perhaps the most interesting opposing roster in the GLOBL JAM belongs to Africa, which Kentucky will face in Saturday’s pool-play finale.

Topping the list of players to watch here will be 6-2 guard Jean Jacques Boissy, who was a first-team All-BAL selection last season. The BAL, which has backing from the NBA and FIBA, is the premier basketball league in Africa, and Boissy is regarded as one of its very top players. The point guard was also a league all-defensive team selection. He is 22 years old and a member of the Senegal national team.

Victor Ezeh, a 6-5 guard, turned 20 years old in February and debuted for the Nigeria senior national team later that month. He’s already playing in the BAL and is viewed as one of the top young stars in Nigeria, the most populous country on the continent.

The African squad will also feature several U.S. college players.

One name in particular should stand out to Kentucky fans: Emmanuel Okorafor, who joined Louisville’s team midway through the 2022-23 season and made immediate contributions. The 6-10 big man is an alumnus of NBA Academy Africa in Senegal, the same program that developed Kentucky’s Ugonna Onyenso.

Babacar Faye — a 6-8 forward — averaged 4.7 points and 4.6 rebounds per game at Charleston last season, helping that program to a 31-4 record and NCAA Tournament berth. He’ll play at Western Kentucky this season after a spring transfer.

Nelly Joseph — a 6-10 forward — was one of Rick Pitino’s best players at Iona, scoring in double figures each of his three years there and averaging 14.9 points, 9.3 rebounds and 1.5 blocks (leading the Gaels in the two latter categories) last season. He’s headed to New Mexico as a transfer this season, where he’ll play for Pitino’s son, Richard Pitino.

Yet another big man to watch will be Aly Khalifa, a 6-11 post player who has started 64 games in two years at Charlotte and averaged 11.7 points and 6.3 rebounds last season. He’s nicknamed the “Egyptian Magician” due to his unique passing and playmaking ability for a frontcourt player, and he’ll be at BYU this season under the tutelage of Coach Mark Pope, the former UK player.

The Cats could have their hands full with this opponent. But that’s likely to be true of the entire trip.

GLOBL JAM

Men’s games in the GLOBL JAM, an international basketball showcase in Toronto featuring Kentucky as the USA representative:

Wednesday

1:30 p.m.: United States vs. Germany (CBS Sports Network live)

8 p.m.: Canada vs. Africa

Thursday

1:30 p.m.: Africa vs. Germany

8 p.m.: Canada vs. United States (CBS Sports Network at midnight)

Saturday

1:30 p.m.: Africa vs. United States (CBS Sports Network live)

8 p.m.: Germany vs. Canada

Sunday

1:30 p.m.: Bronze medal game

8 p.m.: Gold medal game (CBS Sports Network live, if UK is playing)

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