LEXINGTON, Ky. — Those Kentucky Wildcats backers hoping the UK men’s basketball team would turn 2021-22 into a “Rivalry Retribution Tour” are, mostly, getting what they wanted.
John Calipari’s program entered the current season in an unusually supine position for UK — the Wildcats had lost their most recent game to every one of their primary rivals but Tennessee.
In this season’s payback quest, not everything has gone right.
Oscar Tshiebwe, TyTy Washington and the current Cats were not able to pin a farewell defeat on the retiring Mike Krzyzewski in a season-opening loss to Duke in the Champions Classic. A COVID-19 outbreak at Louisville likely saved a struggling U of L from a Rupp Arena beat down.
Otherwise, Kentucky has been pile-driving its most-despised foes. The Wildcats have already registered emphatic victories over North Carolina (by 29 points), Tennessee (by 28) and at Kansas (by 18).
Next up on the rivalry revenge card is Florida on Saturday at 4 p.m. at Rupp.
The last time Mike White’s Gators visited Lexington last Feb. 27, they left with a 71-67 victory over UK. That snapped a five-game Kentucky win streak in the series.
Ultimately, it seems possible that the days when Florida is on the list with Duke, Indiana, Kansas, Louisville, North Carolina and Tennessee as one of UK’s primary rivals are nearing an end.
The temperature of rivalries rises and falls over time. As is evidenced from Wildcats men’s basketball history, a team’s main rivals change.
For most of Joe B. Hall’s tenure as Kentucky head coach in the 1970s and early 1980s, UK’s primary men’s basketball rivals were Indiana, Kansas, LSU, North Carolina, Notre Dame and Tennessee.
During the Rick Pitino coaching era in the 1990s, UK’s main rivals were Arkansas, Indiana, LSU, Louisville, North Carolina and Tennessee.
Over the 10 years (1997-2007) of the Tubby Smith coaching tenure, Kentucky’s primary rivalries were with Duke, Florida, Kansas, Indiana, Louisville, North Carolina and Tennessee.
In the Calipari coaching era (since 2009-10), the Cats’ main hoops antagonists have been Duke, Florida, Kansas, Louisville, North Carolina and Tennessee.
UK’s basketball rivalries arise from three main sources (and there can be overlap).
1.) Louisville (78.8 miles from UK) and Tennessee (171 miles from UK) are “geographic rivals,” Kentucky’s rivalries with them fueled by their close proximity.
The same holds true of Indiana (178 miles from UK), a dormant rivalry since UK’s Calipari and IU could not agree in 2012 on terms to continue playing.
2.) Duke, Kansas and North Carolina are “peer rivals.” Kentucky is the winningest men’s NCAA Division I hoops program of all time. Kansas is second, UNC third and Duke fourth.
Those “peer rivalries” are buttressed by UK’s history of memorable NCAA contests against the Blue Devils, Jayhawks and Tar Heels.
3.) For UK basketball, the third category of rivalries comes from “threat at the top of the conference” antagonists.
Essentially, that is the program that becomes the most persistent threat in any given era to Kentucky’s enduring supremacy in the Southeastern Conference.
This was LSU in the late 1970s and 1980s. It was Arkansas after it entered the SEC in the early 1990s.
Florida assumed that mantle in the first decade of the 21st century as Billy Donovan built the Gators into a national-level program that won two NCAA titles (2006 and 2007) and appeared in four Final Fours (2000, 2006, 2007 and 2014).
Interestingly, there was never the rivalry hostility in Kentucky toward Donovan and UF that existed toward Dale Brown and LSU and Nolan Richardson and Arkansas when the latter two had UK’s SEC hegemony under assault.
In part, that was because Donovan had been a UK assistant under Rick Pitino and was always publicly respectful toward Kentucky. It was also likely because a good number of Wildcats backers hoped that Donovan might move to Lexington at some point to coach the Cats.
As Florida coach, Donovan went 17-27 vs. UK. Those 17 victories over Kentucky are more than any coach ever achieved against the Cats except for Dale Brown’s 18 (against 33 losses) at LSU.
White, Donovan’s Florida successor, has had some good moments against the Wildcats, too. He is 4-8 vs. UK and has two wins over the Cats in Rupp Arena.
The Gators remain an upper-tier SEC basketball program — but it feels like Auburn under Bruce Pearl is moving into the role of the primary league threat to Kentucky.
Pearl and the Tigers pinned a painful NCAA Tournament loss on Kentucky in 2019, knocking the Wildcats out of a Final Four trip with an overtime victory over UK in the Midwest Region finals.
Auburn has beaten Kentucky four out of the past six meetings overall, including an 80-71 home-court victory over the Cats last month that may have determined the SEC regular-season champion.
Adding some rivalry combustibility, Kentucky has prior history against Pearl from his time (2005-2011) coaching Tennessee.
Calipari has prior history of his own against Pearl from the time when the two were head men at Memphis (2000-2009) and UT, respectively.
Just as LSU gave way to Arkansas who gave way to Florida, it feels like Auburn is becoming UK’s main “threat at the top of the conference” rival.
Which is why we may be near the end with regarding Florida as one of Kentucky’s primary basketball rivals.
