Bearcats Basketball Voices Update Latest Summer Workouts, MJ Collins Integration as 2026-27 Roster Finalizes

The Bearcats basketball program held another summer media availability on Friday morning. Assistant coach Ben Asher and a few player voices spoke inside Fifth Third Arena as the chemistry-building continues during this important offseason stretch.

Cincinnati is trying to work through new relationships for every roster spot. They also just added a tentatively impactful player in MJ Collins, who is now practicing with the team amidst the ongoing court battle to earn his fifth year of eligibility.

Asher has been coaching in the sport for 15-plus years now and is entering his third season as an official assistant coach on Calhoun's staff.

"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."

All of the offensive and defensive identity structures are getting built around this roster.

Cincinnati has plenty of talent, entering August as Bart Torvik's 40th-best team in the country and seventh-best in the Big 12. New guard Trevian Carson is ready to thrive in Calhoun's dynamic offensive system.

"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."

Cincinnati has almost every roster spot filled right now as the main focus turns to making this team the tightest, most in-sync operation it can be before real games tip off in November.

They get a few different chances to test their live-game action legs during matchups against Canadian teams in the Bahamas next month, plus an outdoor exhibition against Ohio State in October.

"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."

Check out the full media scrums below via Bearcat Journal:

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