The entire 2020-21 Kentucky men’s basketball team is on campus, John Calipari announced during a Zoom call with the media Tuesday.
Isaiah Jackson was the only player that hadn’t made it to campus, but Calipari confirmed that every member of the team is in Lexington.
“All of our kids are on campus, I believe,” Calipari said. “They’re all on campus working. They’re in a tight bubble when you talk about the lodge, the practice facility, and what we have there. They are getting antsy. They keep asking, ‘when are we going to see you?’ You guys understand I can’t work with them until the 20th [July]. They’re doing conditioning, weight training, and they’re in the gym with shooting machines, shooting on their own. They each block out time in the gym. The kids seem to be safe.”
Calipari added that he would return to campus this week. The UK coach has been on the East Coast safely spending time with his family since he couldn’t do anything on campus since March.
“We have Zoom calls twice a week. I do a Zoom call with them and their families once a week. I’m not allowed to be in my car waving at them, which is why I left campus. I’ve not been there. They keep saying, ‘we want to see you, I came here to work with you, where are you?’ I’m going back this week, but I still can’t be in the gym with them until the 20th.”
While workouts aren’t ideal at the moment, Calipari wants his team to use them to separate from other teams around the country.
“Let’s use this time to separate from everybody else. Let’s use this time to be in the greatest condition; get physically right. We should be a great shooting team because it’s all you can do right now. When we go in, it will be individual work, with conditioning combined. My hope is within a week, or so, we start with 3-on-3 and 5-on-5 to where we’ve been ‘negative’ [COVID-19 testing] for four weeks. We’re in a bubble, we’re safe, as long as no one is breaking the bubble.”
Kentucky has an advantage that not all programs have right now because not all college basketball teams have reported to campus. Kentucky’s set up with the Joe Craft Center sharing a parking lot with the Wildcat Coal Lodge makes it easier to protect the players and keep a sterile bubble with no one from outside allowed access.
“We’re unique. We’re in the lodge where they are in a single room with a single bathroom. They walk across the parking lot, and they’re in a sterile gym that no one else is using. No one else is in the building. Conditioning is outside. The meals are boxed meals. The chef makes it, and we leave it out. If we’re ordering meals away from campus, they’re delivered outside and left; no one breaks into the building. You got a sterile bubble that’s as good as it gets anywhere. Now we have to say; they’ve been negative for this period of time, they’re like a family now. They should be able to be together.”
When asked, Calipari touched on his concern about the college basketball season starting on time or being played, given the spike in COVID-19 cases in recent weeks.
“My opinion on this would be a guess,” Calipari said. “My hope is that we tamp down this virus, and we’re able to come back and play. My hope is pretty strong for basketball because I’ve got a really good team.”
