Cincinnati’s summer basketball work is starting to take shape, and Friday’s media availability at Fifth Third Arena offered a clearer look at where things stand. Assistant coach Ben Asher and a handful of players talked through the ongoing chemistry work, the arrival of MJ Collins, and the way the Bearcats are trying to stitch together a roster that is nearly complete.
Collins is the newest piece in the mix, and he’s already practicing with the team while his fight for a fifth year of eligibility plays out. For Cincinnati, the immediate focus is on getting him folded into the group and making sure the rest of the roster keeps building toward November.
Asher said Collins has been useful right away because he already understands the program and the expectations around it.
"He's a veteran. He knows kind of what it looks like.
He's a guy that's played in two NCAA tournaments," Asher said about Collins. "Obviously, he was with us last year, so it's always great to have someone in your program that knows what the daily expectations are and what the coaches are looking for.
So he's already been great, just being a voice to some of the newer guys, just because, as I said, he's been through it not only as a player at his other stops, but also with this coaching staff. So anytime you can have that continuity, that really really helps bring things together."
Things change by the day, but we're operating that he's eligible right now, so he's a full go. We did ease him into it just because he was a late arrival, and the other guys have been in the weight room and doing stuff for three or four more weeks than he did.
So we did ease him in. It wasn't due to eligibility concerns.
It was just more like we want guys to be healthy and be physically fit and be ready to go."
That broader roster-building process is happening with a team that already has some buzz attached to it. Cincinnati enters August ranked 40th nationally in Bart Torvik’s ratings and seventh in the Big 12, and new guard Trevian Carson is adjusting to the freedom of Calhoun’s offense.
"At first, I was kind of confused because a lot of things were really structured in my experience in basketball," Carson said about his prior experience before entering a more free-flowing system. "Just being able to be free.
Like everybody wants to play free, you know what I'm saying. When you actually get the opportunity to, it's a little adjustment period.
But once you get it down, it's a lot of fun."
With most of the roster in place, the Bearcats are now trying to turn all that talent into a team that moves and thinks together. The real tests are still ahead, but they’re coming soon enough.
Cincinnati will get a few chances to see how it looks in live action next month against Canadian teams in the Bahamas, and then again in October with an outdoor exhibition against Ohio State. Asher said those games will include some preparation, but the bigger value is in seeing how the group responds when the ball is actually tipped.
"Yeah, we'll game plan for sure a little bit," Asher said about the Bahamas exhibitions to start August. "Probably not as intense as we would for a regular season game.
But nowadays with technology, we can get the other teams filmed. So we will have some scouting just to kind of give these guys a little sneak peek of what our scouting is going to look like.
"But it's been great, honestly, because you don't really know what you have until you get out there and play some of these real games. You can only do so much in practice, so it'll be good to just kind of go against some other people and just see how guys react in the heat of the battle."
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