With school set to go back in session in a matter of weeks, students throughout the country are taking advantage of their final chances to get away for summer vacation.It’s no different for the Kentucky basketball team, as the Wildcats leave Saturday for a trip to the Atlantis resort in the Bahamas.Needless to say, players are excited.     “I’ve never been out of the country before so it should be a different experience,” junior Alex Poythress said.As fun as the week and a half will be, the Cats have serious business to tend to while they’re on their Big Blue Bahamas tour. UK will play two games each against the Dominican Republic national team, the Puerto Rico national team reserves and French first-division club team Champagne Chalons-Reims Basket. The first three games on Aug. 10-12 will air at 1 p.m. ET on ESPNU and the second three on Aug. 15-17 at 1 p.m. on the new SEC Network.Fans, undoubtedly, are excited to get an early glimpse of the most experienced John Calipari-coached UK team. Calipari, however, has a warning for them, and it has everything to do with the level of competition the Cats will be facing.”We get down there, we’re going six games in eight days against professional players, which means we probably shouldn’t win any of the games,” Calipari said.Official rosters for UK’s opponents have not yet been released, but the Cats figure to face the likes of Jack Michael Martinez and Francisco Garcia of the Orlando Antigua-led Dominican Republic and Da’Sean Butler and Tasmin Mitchell of Champagne Chalons-Reims Basket. Playing against talented veterans will pose a stiff challenge for a UK team that will be without big men Willie Cauley-Stein and Trey Lyles, both of whom will be held out of competition for precautionary reasons as they recover from injury. As Calipari has mentioned in practice on a number of occasions this week, UK’s competition consists of 30-year-olds who are going to play physical and won’t care how talented the Cats are.”It is going to be tough, but we have been preparing for them and practicing for a long time,” Poythress said. “Just going to get there and take care of business, play the game right and try to do what we can down there.”Before the 2010-11 season, the Cats traveled to Canada and faced overmatched opponents. As when most college teams take these international trips, it was as much about the 10 practices allowed by the NCAA ahead of the trip as the trip itself.Four years later, Calipari has adjusted his priorities to fit his personnel.”I think this team needed something a little different, and that’s why we’re doing this,” Calipari said. “Not sure anybody’s done what we’re doing before. … I don’t think anybody’s done this where they’re flying in a bunch of professional teams to play this and come after us.”That’s why Coach Cal won’t judge success in these games based on the final score.”I don’t want it to be about winning and losing right now,” Calipari said. “I want it to be about development. Are we getting better? Are we learning how to play off of one another? When adversity hits, how do we deal with it? We’re just trying to learn.”To that end, Calipari is considering allowing his assistants to coach in his place for “some of the games” in the Bahamas. Players, specifically UK’s latest crop of highly touted freshmen, have been exposed to Coach Cal’s trademark intensity enough in practices ahead of the trip that it makes sense for the head coach to let go of the reins a bit next week.”Right now, I’m coaching through the whole practice,” Calipari said. “I got 10 days with them and I’m trying to get them – I need the freshmen to know what I’m like to a degree. Like, I said, right now everybody’s happy go lucky. Well, when we get ready to play some games it’ll be a little different. But at least they get the idea of what they’re going to be held accountable for.”The experimenting won’t end there.Even with Cauley-Stein and Lyles sidelined, UK can still go 11 deep. With all that talent and skillsets ranging from bruising center Dakari Johnson to high-flying forward Alex Poythress to water bug point guard Tyler Ulis, figuring out how all the pieces best fit together will take time.The Bahamas could give Calipari a head start. New special assistant to the head coach Tony Barbee has been pitching a zone defense, while Coach Cal is always searching for ways to use more press. He could even turn to a “bomb squad” like Dean Smith used at North Carolina and play a seven-man rotation and another five-man group for occasional five-minute stretches.In other words, Calipari is taking nothing off the table.”At the end of the day you want to win, yet early on in the season it’s more important that you learn,” Calipari said. “What exactly are these guys? This isn’t normal, and I come back to, ‘This isn’t Cal ball. This is how we’re going to play every year.’ We don’t know how we’re going to play every year. Why is that? I got different players every year, and different strengths and different weaknesses. If I try to play a certain way and it’s detrimental to the players, but it’s for me, my way? I mean, we don’t know.Given the circumstances – minimal practice time, high-level opponents, experimental styles of play – short-term failure is inevitable. That’s fine with Coach Cal, though, because long-term success is the goal. “What happens to these guys, whether we win or lose they’re hungry after the game,” Calipari said. “Let them take an L on national television and see how hungry they are then. I’m trying to teach them.”