Kentucky fans can see Ansley Almonor play in the TBT in July. (Vicky Graff Photo)
Kentucky coach Mark Pope certainly embraced LaFamilia, Kentucky’s alumni team that hosted The Basketball Tournament’s (TBT) regional, last season. Pope had only been UK’s head coach for a few months but he brought his team — and family — to watch the former UK stars play both in Lexington and Louisville.
Pope has openly talked about wanting to embrace former UK players that were on John Calipari’s roster during this event. However, this July one of Pope’s players — Ansley Almonor — will be playing for coach Sean Woods’ LaFamilia team in Memorial Coliseum July 18-23.
Aaron Harrison, Andrew Harrison, Doron Lamb, DeAndre Liggins and Willie Cauley-Stein — all former Calipari players — have already committed to play this season. The Harrison twins and Cauley-Stein all played last summer.
Almonor broke the news with BBN Tonight hosts Keith Farmer and Maggie Davis on WLEX-TV Monday night.
“What’s up, BBN? I’ll be coming back to Lexington this summer for LaFamilia. I’ll see y’all soon. I already miss playing in front of BBN and I already miss the city of Lexington, so I can’t wait to go out there and represent you guys one more time,” Almonor said.
Almonor played three years at Fairleigh Dickinson University and scored over 1,000 points before transferring to UK for his final season after Pope’s arrival. He played in 36 games with seven starts while averaging 5.3 points per game with 11 double-figure scoring games. He became the first UK player to shoot at least 50 percent from the field, 40 percent from 3 and 90 percent from the free-throw line in a season.
The winner of the Lexington Regional will advance to TBT’s quarterfinals July 29. The semifinals will be held on July 31, and TBT’s $1 million championship will be played on Aug. 3.
Tickets are on sale at https://tbthoops.com/tickets.
4 Responses
50%, 40%, and 90%. Why didn’t he make a bigger difference on the floor? Especially, with all of the injuries. My guess is that a pecking order got established early on and Almonor didn’t want to rock the boat. If he had, we could have had 2 or 3 more wins and an Elite 8 appearance by virtue of a higher seeding and most likely being in another region…maybe a Final 4? Andrew Carr won some big games for us, but his back issues caused him to fade down the stretch. Almonor was capable of taking his place but seemed reluctant to do so. Team chemistry and dynamics have as much to do with how far a team goes as talent and coaching. It will definitely be a factor in Pope’s second Kentucky team.
I agree. Why would you play someone who can’t jump or run because of a back issue. Almonor actually played great when his name was called. It just wasn’t called often and early enough. He led his conference in scoring yes its a weak conference but that shows he can score the basketball. He was one of my favorite players and actually won a couple of games for us this year. It seemed like he was our spark plug off the bench.
Dude I called this. I said he should play for la familia and so should any other recent player who didn’t make it to the NBA.
Love that Ansley is doing this and remember when you suggested that Terry