The latter third of John Calipari’s 15-season run as Kentucky men’s basketball coach keeps making the wrong kind of history.
UK’s 89-85 loss to Gonzaga at Rupp Arena on Saturday marked the third consecutive home loss for the 2023-24 Wildcats. Since Rupp Arena opened in 1976-77, no Kentucky team had lost three straight games in the venue.
With UK standing 16-7 with eight games left in its regular season, it seems all but certain that Calipari is headed toward his sixth double-digit loss campaign as Kentucky’s coach. That will break a tie with Tubby Smith and be the most seasons of 10 losses or more by anyone who has coached men’s hoops at UK.
Having lost the all-time wins lead to Kansas during the 2021-22 season, Kentucky got it back last offseason when the NCAA ordered the Jayhawks program to vacate 15 wins for use of an ineligible player during the 2017-18 season.
Down 10 wins to KU at the conclusion of the 2022-23 season, UK was up five entering this year, 2,375-2,370, in the official all-time victories standings.
Well, don’t look now, but Kansas (19-5) has already gained three games in the all-time wins chase and seems likely to pass Kentucky again by the end of this season.
Barring a dramatic turnaround, it seems UK — 6-4 in the SEC and behind four other teams that have fewer league losses in the standings — will fail to win the SEC regular-season championship for the sixth time in the past seven seasons. For a program that has won outright or shared 49 such titles, it is an unusually barren stretch.
As a Kentucky backer, one does not have to be part of the “negative Nellies attacking” — to use Calipari’s words on his postgame radio show following the Gonzaga loss to describe critics — to be concerned about the competitive arc of the Wildcats program.
Yet, even while acknowledging that the Kentucky defensive woes that continue to sabotage the Wildcats show no sign of improving and that UK’s difficulties in executing offensively under game-deciding pressure are a growing concern, it is far too soon to pack it in on the 2023-24 Cats.
