The Kentucky men’s basketball team will host a telethon and open practice at Rupp Arena Tuesday night to raise money for the victims of the eastern Kentucky floods.
Kentucky senior forward Jacob Toppin says CJ Fredrick presented the idea and the team went to John Calipari to put the plan into action.
“CJ actually came to us about it and then we all went to Coach and we talked about what we can do to best benefit eastern Kentucky and what we can do to help them,” Toppin said. “And we came up with the idea of doing what we’re doing tomorrow, raising money.”
Being from Kentucky, the situation is different for Fredrick, who played high school basketball at Covington Catholic.
“This one hits a little different for me,” Fredrick said. “Just being from the state, seeing the devastating things that happen, it really came to me and the whole team, what can we do to help? We have a really special team. For the whole team to come together and basically go off Cal’s leadership as servant leaders and come together and do this, but like you said, being from the state, this means a lot to me and we’re just as a team extremely excited for tomorrow, to help out in any way we can for eastern Kentucky.”
Fredrick and his teammates will take the floor Tuesday night at Rupp Arena at 6:30 p.m. ET.
“The brand of Kentucky is a huge brand and I knew it could make an immediate impact,” said Fredrick. “You think of what Cal does with his leadership. This is what he teaches us. It kind of came to my head and I thought it would be a great way to get the fans involved, bringing them out to Rupp, watching us practice, and raising money, and it would be a great thing for everybody to get together right now.”
