Cincinnati Bearcats Playing 2 Exhibition Games Against Canadian Competition Leading Into 2026-27 Season

The Bearcats are hitting the road this August for a fun team trip that involves plenty of hoops action. Jerrod Calhoun is taking his first basketball squad to the Bahamas for a pair of friendly games against Canadian college basketball programs in the Baha Mar Hoops Summer League.

The league just announced the game schedule on Thursday, as Cincinnati is set to play Calgary on Sunday, Aug. 2, at 2 p.m. ET before taking on the Victoria team on Tuesday, Aug. 4 at 2:30 p.m. ET.

Four other Division I teams are playing in the event: Arkansas, Valparaiso, Texas A&M, and South Carolina. None of those teams will face a fellow DI program down south.

It should be a nice way for Calhoun to continue getting his team to gel in what's been a whirlwind offseason. All 15 potential roster spots available will be filled by brand-new players to Cincinnati, although Calhoun does have a few Utah State transfers who are obviously familiar with him.

"Leadership comes in many ways," Calhoun said in a media scrum last month about the mix. "The reason we have some older guys and some younger guys is that that's all by design. I think it's very hard to take 10 or 12 one-year guys, so I like to build a system where we don't have to do what we did last year with the portal, bringing a whole new team every year. That's not a recipe that I love.

"So we're gonna attack high school recruiting. I think we're setting the record for Zooms. We did three of them yesterday, and we got two today, right after practice. So, if I run out of here, we're on another Zoom, but we're playing catch-up a little bit in that department. But we're gonna kill the high school recruiting."

Calhoun has had a decade-plus of pushing different team-building buttons to grow a roster as much as possible before Game 1, and this is a clearly important rung to grab hold of on that ladder.

"Every stop I've really had to really build the program," Calhoun said in an interview with The Field of 68 this offseason. "At Fairmont State, we inherited a team that won eight games. You know, the year before, Youngstown was very similar, and then you step into Utah State, where Coach Sprinkle absolutely crushed it for one year, so you know you're kind of on edge every single day trying to live up to that standard. So every stop has been different, but every stop, I think we've gotten better and learned a great deal."

Cincinnati should get some great reps in its first offseason team trip of the Calhoun era. It's a big change from the annual trip to Chicago that Wes Miller would take his teams on in the weeks before the regular season.

This is way further away from the regular season, but it still should be very impactful. Check out the full schedule below:

The full schedule for Baha Mar Hoops Summer League is now official! @BahaMarResorts will play host to 13 games featuring:@RazorbackMBB @GoBearcatsMBB @GamecockMBB @aggiembk @ValpoBasketball @VisitTheBahamas @DinosMBB @CURavensBBall @mbb_dal @TorosDelValle @uvicvikes pic.twitter.com/eoFNwRcpn4
— Baha Mar Hoops (@BahaMarHoops) July 2, 2026

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