Series with Big Blue stirs SEC emotions
Thirty years as conference rivals, it can be said that Arkansas cares more about its basketball series with Kentucky than the other way around.
A 33-13 advantage over the Razorbacks is offered as Exhibit A. Another is Kentucky’s 8-1 advantage in NCAA titles. Arkansas even lost an SEC tournament rematch with the Wildcats in the 1993-94 season, greatest in program history, after winning at Bud Walton Arena.
The Arkansas-Kentucky series reached a feverish pitch only when Nolan Richardson coached in Fayetteville and Rick Pitino in Lexington. One remembers seeing Pitino at Oaklawn one day with longtime UK equipment manager Bill Keithley. They were en route to Charlotte for the Final Four, where on the following Monday night Arkansas beat Duke 76-72 (star of the game: Scotty Thurman).
Pitino and Keithley stacked up losing tickets at the track, ostensibly here to play Rock Oliver, a slow-footed beast named for the UK strength coach and that CBS sportscaster Lesley Visser figured in the ownership.
Legendary Kentucky basketball and football announcer Cawood Ledford, though retired from the booth after Pitino’s Unforgettables lost to Duke on Christian Laettner’s buzzer shot (he missed none that night in 1992), was still around. Ledford, the essence of class up until his 2001 death at 75, took postgame greetings from Duke’s Coach K, then working on the Blue Devils’ second-straight NCAA title. In what he knew would be his last game for Kentucky, Ledford scanned the scoreboard, seeing Blue Devils 104, Wildcats 103 in overtime, and told his listeners, “That’s why they’re number one.”
John Calipari has continued the tradition of winning championships at Kentucky begun by Adolph Rupp and extending to coaches Joe B. Hall, Pitino and Tubby Smith. The Commonwealth of Kentucky is far enough south that the hiring of Smith, a Black man, caused something of a stir. Rupp, it is said, explained to a Black player his reluctance to recruit one for so long.
“Because I didn’t have to,” Reggie Warford remembers the Bluegrass Baron’s response. “I’ve always gotten the best white players in the country.”
That posture softened when Wes Unseld, a 6-foot-7 center from Louisville Seneca High, and a Black player, stayed home rather than pledge to Kentucky. Before Unseld went on to professional glory, Texas-Western’s all-Black starting five stunned Rupp’s Runts in the 1966 NCAA title game.
The Arkansas-Kentucky rivalry grew along DukeNorth Carolina lines when Richardson’s Razorbacks began to beat the Wildcats. Arkansas lost some heartbreakers to Kentucky in the SEC tournament, though winning when the teams met in March 2000 for its only such title.
That said, more Arkansas people are passionate about football than basketball. Think of Kentucky as the Alabama of SEC basketball, although not since 2012 have the Wildcats trimmed the nets on a Monday night in April. The best that can be said is that Arkansas became a pesky opponent for Kentucky, one that Big Blue Nation valued beating. Not like Louisville or Indiana, mind you; but like Tennessee and the flavor of the year (currently Alabama) in the SEC.
Kentucky has been wobbly enough this season that a home loss to South Carolina had Wildcat fans sure the sky was falling. Calipari, some said, cared more about sending players to the NBA than expanding the school’s trophy collection. The one-and-done system, which had been good to his program, suddenly was seen in a different light, especially when the 2015 Wildcats, the Unbeatables to Pitino’s Unforgettables, lost (to Wisconsin) in the Final Four.
UK has dropped out of the national rankings, a blow to Big Blue Pride, but is playing better now, beating Tennessee on the road and scratching out a close win Saturday at Rupp Arena against Florida.
Look for a close one tonight at Rupp in the teams’ first of two meetings, both teams 16-7 with Kentucky 7-3 to Arkansas’ 5-5 in the SEC. Kentucky returns the favor March 4, Calipari getting tossed out of the 2020 game at Bud Walton Arena though the Wildcats pulled through 73-66.
Eric Musselman has backto-back wins in the series, 8180 at Lexington in 2021 and 75-73 in Fayetteville last year, snapping the Hogs’ eightgame losing streak to the Wildcats. Mike Anderson didn’t win enough to suit the fans but took both meetings with UK in the 2013-14 season, Michael Qualls’ slam-dunk follow shot bringing down the Wildcats (and the house) 87-85 in overtime.
Arkansas, after starting 1-5 in the SEC, has shown life recently but still appears rudderless at times with the long-term absence of projected superstar Nick Smith Jr.
Kentucky, at its Tennessee-game best, is superior to Arkansas. Reigning national player of the year Oscar Tschiebwe (6-9, 260) is capable of dominating the Razorbacks inside. The Wildcats are to be feared if their spacing results in open shots.
Win or lose, each team has some important games remaining. The Walton Arena crazies get one crack every two years at Calipari, who will not go quietly into that good night whatever the scoreboard reads. Ashley Judd’s favorite team is playing at home tonight, and don’t look for empty seats in an arena with capacity of 20,545. The Wildcats usually win at home but their fans never rush the court because in their perception no Kentucky victory is ever an upset.