Foreign tours allow college basketball teams to play up to 10 games against non-USA opponents every summer now. I’ve probably been tracking these games and grabbing box scores and game film for nearly a decade. I believe in 2015 I traded some game film with an assistant coach who was trying to prepare for their first game of the season.
Yeah these are just exhibition games, yeah they aren’t always played competitively to the final whistle, but there’s still plenty of signal to be gained from them. You can still evaluate individual players, you can glean how well they recovered from injuries over the offseason1 It might not be terribly useful quantitatively, but it’s still useful qualitatively.
So here is the spreadsheet I’ve kept for the past summer. It’s not perfect, as information among foreign tours is spotty. Some teams like Michigan and Arizona fully publicize everything, and make it easy to watch their games. Other teams like Ohio State don’t really care about the visibility. And other teams just straight up do them and don’t say anything about them, like Portland State.
Oh one additional note: prep teams. They make trips too. They generally don’t really have any restrictions other than the resources required to make them. Last year SPIRE did a big tour, this year Utah Prep went to China. The Grind Session went to Italy last year and appears to be going there against this year, in the days leading up to the Eternal City Tip-Off (make note scouts).
Below is my spreadsheet. If you have any information you would like to add to it, please let me know!
1 Why did Josh Ojianwuna barely play in Ohio State’s two exhibition games in Puerto Rico? I worry their medical staff is extremely too conservative with players in general, but he’s 1.5 years away from torn ACL. The fact he barely played tells me either his rehab went wrong at some point, or the medical staff is being too conservative despite “fully clearing" him according to Jake Diebler.