The national champs are playing in Rupp Arena this weekend. How often has that happened?
It’s always a spectacle when Kentucky and Kansas meet on the basketball court.
There will be another wrinkle to the matchup of blue bloods Saturday night: The No. 9-ranked Jayhawks visit Rupp Arena as the reigning national champions.
How often has the current home of Kentucky basketball hosted the national champs? Kansas will be the seventh such team to play UK in Rupp since the building was opened in 1976.
(Kentucky played just one home game against the defending champions in the pre-Rupp Arena era — a 63-54 win over La Salle in Memorial Coliseum in 1954.)
Of course, Rupp has also hosted the NCAA champions in four additional seasons, with Kentucky playing as reigning champs following titles in 1978, 1996, 1998 and 2012.
This will also be the eighth game that Kansas has played in Rupp Arena — the Cats are 5-2 in those matchups so far — but the first as defending champs.
The UK-Kansas meeting on Dec. 11, 1976, was actually the third basketball game to be played in Rupp Arena, and that occasion — Adolph Rupp was a native of Kansas and a former Jayhawks player under Phog Allen — was used as the official “dedication” of the arena in Rupp’s name.
Here’s a look at the six previous games pitting Kentucky against the national champs in Rupp Arena.
Calipari vs. Pitino
Result: No. 18 Kentucky 73, No. 6 Louisville 66 (Dec. 28, 2013).
The second and most recent time John Calipari led Kentucky against the reigning national champions in Rupp Arena featured a familiar face on the other sideline: Louisville’s Rick Pitino.
Pitino led his Cards onto the Rupp court for the sixth time as head coach of Kentucky’s in-state rival, and the former UK boss did so just eight months after leading Louisville to the 2013 national title. The Cardinals faced a UK team featuring six McDonald’s All-American freshmen — led by Julius Randle and the Harrison twins — but it was also a Wildcats squad with an 0-3 record against ranked opponents to that point.
Louisville provided that Kentucky team with its first big win of the season, with James Young going for 18 points and 10 rebounds — and making UK’s only three three-pointers of the game — to lead the Wildcats.
Kentucky got on the right track in the postseason, beating U of L in the Sweet 16 in Indianapolis on its way to the national title game. Pitino’s 2013 banner was lowered a few years later after the NCAA vacated Louisville’s national championship as a result of rules violations.
John Wall vs. UNC
Result: No. 5 Kentucky 68, No. 10 North Carolina 66 (Dec. 5, 2009).
Five days before UNC won the 2009 national title, Kentucky hired Calipari as its next head coach.
The two sides met in Rupp Arena a few weeks into the 2009-10 season, and the game served as another early showcase for star UK freshman John Wall, who felt he had been jilted by his home-state Tar Heels as a recruit. Wall tallied 16 points, seven assists and three steals, sparking a 28-2 UK run at one point and wowing the home crowd in the first major game of the Calipari era. UK had a 7-0 record going into that day, but the new-look Wildcats had not faced a ranked opponent before UNC came to town.
Kentucky won its first 19 games, ultimately losing to West Virginia in the Elite Eight and finishing Calipari’s first season with a 35-3 record. Wall was the No. 1 pick in the 2010 NBA Draft. UNC ended up going 5-11 in league play and missed the NCAA Tournament altogether.
A new Florida team
Result: Kentucky 75, Florida 70 (March 9, 2008).
Technically, the Gators were two-time reigning national champs when they walked into Rupp Arena for UK’s 2008 Senior Night, but this Florida squad was a far cry from the group that had cut down the nets the two previous seasons. The mass roster exodus that occurred after the Gators’ title repeat left Billy Donovan with a new-look team, and Marreese Speights and Nick Calathes led Florida in scoring in this game. (Future UK assistant coach Jai Lucas chipped in with 13 points for the visitors.)
Billy Gillispie was wrapping up his first season as Kentucky’s coach, and Joe Crawford and Ramel Bradley were honored in their final home games, scoring 16 and 14 points, respectively. Perry Stevenson led the Cats with 18 points, 10 rebounds and five blocked shots, but this game won’t go down alongside other UK-Florida classics of the era. Of the six games on this list, this is the only one that didn’t feature at least one top-10 team. The Gators went to the NIT that season, while Kentucky lost in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
A Rupp Arena record
Result: No. 1 Florida 64, No. 20 Kentucky 61 (Feb. 10, 2007).
ESPN’s “College GameDay” was in town, and a record crowd of 24,465 packed Rupp Arena to see the Wildcats face a defending national champion Florida squad that came into the day with a 22-2 record and 9-0 mark in the Southeastern Conference. The Gators left Lexington with their perfect league record intact, but they got a good scare.
Kentucky fought back from a 16-point deficit and had a shot to tie it at the buzzer, but the Florida squad led by Joakim Noah, Al Horford, Corey Brewer and company held on in the end. The Gators beat UK by 13 points in Gainesville to finish the regular season, then won all three of their SEC Tournament games by double digits before repeating as national champions. Kentucky lost in the second round of the NCAA Tournament to cap Tubby Smith’s final season.
At the time, this game topped the Rupp Arena attendance list. The record would ultimately be broken three times during the Calipari era, with the Kentucky-Louisville rivalry game on Jan. 2, 2010 — the first featuring Calipari vs. Pitino — holding the top spot with an official attendance of 24,479. (The aforementioned UK-North Carolina game from 2009 is second on that list.)
UNC pulls an upset
Result: North Carolina 83, No. 10 Kentucky 79 (Dec. 3, 2005).
North Carolina came to Lexington as reigning national champs in 2005, but the core of that title team — namely Rashad McCants, Raymond Felton and Sean May — were all off to the pros by then. That left No. 10-ranked Kentucky as the home favorite over a UNC squad that was still searching for its identity and relying heavily on a star freshman class that featured Bobby Frasor, Marcus Ginyard, Danny Green and future national player of the year Tyler Hansbrough.
Rajon Rondo led the Cats with 20 points that day, but Kentucky was outrebounded 37-30 and surrendered 15 offensive boards to the Tar Heels, who left town with a signature victory and made their season debut in the Top 25 a couple of days later.
North Carolina ultimately earned a 3 seed in the NCAA Tournament but was bounced by 11-seeded (and Final Four-bound) George Mason in the second round. UK also lost in the second round to top-seeded UConn.
Bobby gets the boot
Result: No. 2 Kentucky 85, No. 10 Indiana 69 (Dec. 8, 1981).
Forty years ago, there weren’t many better feelings for a Kentucky basketball fan than knocking off a good Indiana team. How to make such a victory even sweeter? Watching Bobby Knight have to endure an early exit.
The Indiana coach and perennial thorn in Kentucky’s side was hit with two technical fouls — delivering a swift kick to the scorer’s table in the process — and sent packing to the Rupp Arena visitors’ locker room in the first half. After the game, Knight claimed that his ejection “didn’t make a hell of a lot of difference” in the final outcome: a UK rout and a lopsided contest that featured a 25-point lead for the Cats during one stretch.
Dirk Minniefield led Kentucky with 22 points, Jim Master had 17 points and nine assists, and Melvin Turpin turned in a double-double (11 points and 10 rebounds). It marked the third straight UK win in the series — the Cats had defeated the eventual national champs the previous season — and the first time Kentucky had taken three in a row over Knight, who started his IU coaching career with five consecutive victories against the Wildcats. He left Lexington on that Saturday in December a defeated man, and his parting words were surely music to the ears of UK fans.
“They beat us badly,” Knight conceded. “They beat the hell out of us.”
Saturday
No. 9 Kansas at Kentucky
What: SEC/Big 12 Challenge
When: 8 p.m.
TV: ESPN
Radio: WLAP-AM 630, WBUL-FM 98.1
Records: Kentucky 14-6 (5-3 SEC), Kansas 16-4 (5-3 Big 12)
Series: Kentucky leads 24-10
Last meeting: Kentucky won 80-62 on Jan. 29, 2022, in the SEC/Big 12 Challenge at Lawrence, Kan.
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