KSR Today: La Familia makes TBT debut, Reed vs. Rob, Peach Jam

The day you’ve been waiting for is finally here, folks. There is a ton going on across all sports, but the main course and primetime battle that has all of Big Blue Nation’s attention is set to begin in Lexington on Friday.

La Familia, Kentucky’s alumni squad in The Basketball Tournament, will make its debut against 305 Ballers — a team of former athletes from Miami — inside Rupp Arena at 8 p.m. ET, live on FS2 and TBT’s official website. It’s a chance to see the likes of Eric Bledsoe, Willie Cauley-Stein, Aaron and Andrew Harrison, Kellan Grady and Nate Sestina take the floor back where it all started in blue and white.

“It feels good to be home. I haven’t been here in a while — that’s my bad,” Bledsoe told KSR. “But I’m here now [laughs]. … I can’t do nothing but feel blessed being back where it all started for me. I’m definitely excited to play at Rupp.”

Tickets can be purchased here — plenty remain up for grabs on Ticketmaster — with first-round attendance serving as the tiebreaker to decide home-court advantage for the TBT Quarterfinals, potentially against Louisville’s alumni team, The Ville.

Get to Rupp Arena and support their push for a TBT championship (and the million-dollar prize that comes with it).

Current Cats defeat past Cats

Speaking of La Familia and The Basketball Tournament, the former Cats took on the current Kentucky team in practice — allowed by the NCAA during summer workouts. They took the floor together for the first time on Tuesday, a matchup heavily favoring the old guys in a half-court setting at the Joe Craft Center. And then from there, they ran it back together at Rupp Arena for a full-court practice run.

How’d things go in round two? The young guys got ’em pretty good, according to a few KSR sources in attendance. Mark Pope’s squad torched the nets from three while the pace and ball movement really disrupted any and all potential momentum for La Familia. Eric Bledsoe and Nate Sestina were phenomenal on the losing side, but it wasn’t enough to slow down the current group’s offensive firepower, getting up and down the floor and raining threes.

There is a full practice report available over on KSBoard, found here. Make sure you check that out, along with the highlights the Kentucky video team dropped on Thursday:

Reed Sheppard and Rob Dillingham combine for 35

Speaking of iron sharpening iron, how about a pair of former Cats going at it in Las Vegas at the NBA Summer League? Reed Sheppard and his Houston Rockets took on Rob Dillingham and his Minnesota Timberwolves late Thursday evening, a matchup that favored the latter in double-digit fashion.

How did the fan favorites play, though? After slow starts, they both finished extremely well, Sheppard going for a team-high 20 points on 9-17 shooting with seven assists, five rebounds, two steals and a block while unfortunately adding nine turnovers in the loss. As for Dillingham, he shot poorly (6-21 FG, 2-7 3PT) but finished with a solid all-around stat line of 15 points, six assists and five rebounds in the win.

Most importantly, we got a few incredible photos of the Kentucky boys paired up in the head-to-head battle.

Check out the highlights for yourself below:

Kentucky closes out SEC Media Days

Switching gears over to the gridiron, Mark Stoops and a few football Wildcats took the podium at SEC Media Days in Dallas, wrapping up the event as the final speakers of the week.

There, the Kentucky head coach addressed offseason speculation regarding Texas A&M’s interest — “I was pursued pretty aggressively by them and we’ll just leave it at that out of respect for everybody involved” — while also talking about wanting more in Lexington following back-to-back underwhelming 7-6 campaigns.

“Ultimately, we got to get better. We got to find a way to make those players in critical moments to push us over the top. We’re not interested in just existing,” Stoops said. “I’m not here, I’m not coaching, I’m not back for the 12th year just to to exist. We want to improve, we want to use these rules, whatever it is, to make changes to make that jump to get to the next level.”

Check out Stoops at the podium, followed by Deone Walker, Marques Cox and D’Eryk Jackson:

Stoops and the trio of Wildcats also participated in separate interviews with local media members in attendance to wrap up the day. You can watch those below, as well:

And a full list of KSR’s coverage from Dallas to wrap up Kentucky’s appearance at SEC Media Days:

• Mark Stoops wishes the best for John Calipari: “He and I’ve had a really good relationship for a long time.”
• Unsatisfied Mark Stoops Believes in Kentucky Culture, “We want more”

Peach Jam brings debut of ‘Here Comes The Boom’

As the football guys leave Dallas, the basketball guys have arrived in North Augusta for the Nike EYBL Peach Jam finals, the biggest high school recruiting event of the year. Coaches are set to pour into Riverview Park Activities Center to watch the nation’s top talents compete throughout the weekend with their eyes on the championship trophy handed out on Sunday.

There will be dozens upon dozens of interviews and updates to come out of the weekend, but until then, how about the debut of Jacob Polacheck’s new recruiting show on the KSR YouTube channel, “Here Comes The Boom.”

Polacheck breaks down all of Kentucky’s top targets set to participate this weekend, along with some of the other players suiting up on other shoe circuits. On3’s Jamie Shaw also makes an appearance, as does Jacob’s awesome dog.

Enjoy the first show of many to come:

All gas and no brakes for us here in North Augusta. Hold on to your butts.