Former UK basketball stars win in their TBT return to Rupp. ‘Such a good feeling.’

Before, during and after the opening game of the TBT for La Familia on Friday night, it was all smiles in Rupp Arena.

The walk down memory lane began before the former Kentucky Wildcats even took the court. While the game before theirs in this summer tournament was still being played, a few of the ex-Cats stuck their heads out of the tunnel to get a peek at their old stomping grounds. A few minutes later, Aaron Harrison was signing autographs for a long line of UK fans. A few minutes after that, his twin brother Andrew was doing the same.

And then it was time to play some ball.

La Familia — a team featuring several former UK basketball stars — defeated the Miami-based 305 Ballers 82-56 in front of an official attendance of 3,954 in Rupp Arena, one of the top 20 crowds in the 11-year history of the TBT.

“It’s amazing,” said Andrew Harrison afterward. “Such a good feeling coming out and hearing them screaming and happy to see you. It’s exciting. I’m happy to be here and having fun playing basketball for the first time in a long time.”

“Running out there was an unbelievable feeling,” added Aaron. “I’m not sure many other schools in the country could, you know, get that together, to get that many people together to come see something like that. So it’s special to be a part of this.”

La Familia head coach Tyler Ulis sent out a starting lineup featuring Andrew Harrison, Eric Bledsoe, Nate Sestina, Willie Cauley-Stein and Kerem Kanter — the younger brother of Enes Freedom Kanter and the only player on the team who didn’t play college ball for the Cats.

Each time a player was announced during the pregame introductions — and every time a new sub checked into the game — the Rupp crowd popped in appreciation.

Kanter led the way with 21 points. Bledsoe and Aaron Harrison added 13 points each, while Sestina and Andrew Harrison scored 12 and 11, respectively.

There was plenty of feel-good nostalgia to go around.

Aaron Harrison, who shot the Cats to the NCAA title game in 2014, was the game’s first sub and promptly drained his first attempt in Rupp in nearly a decade . It was a 3-pointer, of course. Bledsoe hit Cauley-Stein with an alley-oop, drawing some oohs and aahs from the Rupp crowd.

Sestina, who didn’t get a chance to play in the NCAA Tournament during his only season at UK — the 2020 edition was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic — lives in Lexington when he’s not playing professionally overseas and has talked about the TBT as a chance to take care of some unfinished business. He backed up that talk Friday night, flying up and down the court — the most animated, by far, of any of the former Wildcats. Early in the second half, Sestina hung on the rim after a fast-break dunk and gestured to the UK bench before he let go of the iron.

Later in the third quarter, Kellan Grady hit a 3-pointer, and the crowd erupted in a “Go Big Blue!” chant. The Kentucky players flapped their arms up and down, asking for more. A little while after that, Cauley-Stein blocked the same player at the rim twice in succession. “Willie! Willie!” the crowd chanted as the 7-footer smiled while standing in the same paint he used to patrol in college .

“It felt great, you know, getting to see these guys again,” said Ulis, who is now 1-0 as a head coach and played with the Harrisons and Cauley-Stein in college. “You know, we go our separate ways and don’t see each other for 3-4-5 years. So to come back together and be able to get this done — my first win. I told ’em, ‘You gotta have my back on this one.’ And they did. They left it all out there. And I’m happy to get it.”

La Familia will play an Atlanta-based team called “The Nawf” at 2 p.m. Sunday in the second game of the Lexington Regional. That game will be aired live on Fox, and tickets are available through Ticketmaster.com . The winner of the 64-team, single-elimination tournament will earn $1 million.

In a moment of shared honesty after Friday’s game, Ulis and the Harrisons acknowledged they weren’t the closest of friends when they were on campus together for the 2014-15 season, when Kentucky went 38-1 and nearly pulled off a perfect season of college basketball.

Ulis and Devin Booker were freshmen and best friends, the backups to the twins, who were sophomore starters on that UK squad coached by John Calipari.

“It’s different, because I think me, Aaron and Tyler — I think we’re closer or we talk more now than we did when we were on the team,” Andrew said. “Just because of the competitiveness we had with each other during practice and stuff. So now it’s like, ‘Oh, man, we’re all grown men.’ … So I feel like that’s the best part, just being able to come and just be family for real. Be like, you know, we’re all together. It’s fun.”

Ulis chimed in to agree.

“When we were here, it was just so much between us and Book,” he said. “We were competing for spots, competing for time. And we never had the time to really sit back and talk and just hang out for real… And now, like he said, it’s fun to be able to sit here.”

Ulis said he was just telling La Familia general manager Twany Beckham — another former UK player in the Calipari era — that he felt like he was getting to know the twins better over the past few days than when they were teammates.

“So, you know, that’s good that we’re all grown men now, and we wish each other the best. It’s good to be here and spend this time together.”

To add to the good times, longtime UK walk-on Brennan Canada — a lifelong Wildcats fan who said earlier in the week that he grew up admiring many of his La Familia teammates — scored the final point of the game. Canada was immediately surrounded by his childhood heroes.

“He seems like a good kid,” said Aaron Harrison, who turns 30 years old in October. “We were all happy for him to get that last shot off, for sure. That just shows how close we became in such a short time. We were all rooting for him, and just having fun, really.”

Behind the same baseline where Canada hit that free throw sat every player on the current Kentucky roster. The 2024-25 Wildcats — now coached by Mark Pope — had the opportunity to practice against Calipari’s former UK players twice earlier in the week.

Both sides have talked about how good of an experience that was in recent days. The new guys got to pick the brains of players who had been here before. The “old” guys got to come back — some of them after years of being away — and enjoy the UK basketball experience again.

Andrew Harrison talked about seeing photos of himself on the walls of Rupp Arena and the Craft Center and catching up with old teammates, staff members, reporters and other familiar faces from his college days.

“This is like no other place,” he said. “Just being able to see all the legends and stuff, and all the kids that came after me. It’s fun, bro. It’s fun. Just seeing yourself on the wall, it makes me feel so good, because it’s been so long since we had that type of support. So just being here around everybody — around you guys, like some of you guys put a smile on my face, because I haven’t been here and got love from you guys in so long. So, man, it’s amazing. It’s amazing.”

The UK basketball players taking part in the TBT in Rupp. And what they’re doing now.

Together again after nearly 10 years, Harrison twins are eager for UK basketball return

Darius Miller is back in Lexington. And looking at a new chapter in his basketball life.

‘There’s no place like that.’ Cauley-Stein savors UK return in The Basketball Tournament.

Tyler Ulis is following John Calipari to Arkansas. He has unfinished business at UK first.

Former Kentucky basketball players call on fans to ‘pack Rupp out’ for TBT this summer

Pope’s UK players vs. former Cats? It’s happening this summer. Both sides are excited.

Fifteen years, 50 picks. A history of UK basketball players drafted in the Calipari era.