Kentucky's defense could not slow down Georgia in Tuesday's loss. (Vicky Graff Photo)
Kentucky basketball continues to make the wrong kind of history under coach Mark Pope.
Tuesday’s stunning 86-78 loss to Georgia matched UK’s worst loss ever against Georgia in any game played outside of Athens, Ga. Kentucky lost 65-57 to Georgia in Rupp Arena on Jan. 17, 2004, according to UK stats guru Corey Price.
Price had way too many “this is not good” notes to share after UK lost to a team that was 1-5 in its last six SEC games going into Tuesday night’s game.
— Kentucky has allowed at least 82 points in each of their last three games against Georgia over the last three seasons. Kentucky allowed at least 82 points against Georgia three times in the previous 29 seasons combined (1994-1995 to 2022-2023).
— This was just the second time since 2004-2005 that Kentucky lost a game in Rupp Arena with a UK player making at least six 3-pointers like Collin Chandler did. The only other one was when Rob Dillingham hit six against Tennessee in 2024.
— Georgia was UK’s 15th loss over the last three seasons when scoring at least 78 points. Kentucky had 14 such losses in the previous 15 seasons combined (2008-2009 to 2022-2023).
— This was only the second time in the Mark Pope era that UK lost when the team hit at least 12 3-pointers. The other one was against Louisville in November.
— It was Georgia’s first win in Rupp Arena since March 4, 2009, just a few weeks before UK fired coach Billy Gillespie. It was also Georgia’s third win in the last four games against UK, something Louisville Courier-Journal columnist Ryan Black reported had happened only once before and that was 100 years ago.
Kentucky is not faring all that well under Pope in Rupp Arena. Pope has six Rupp Arena losses — and more are possible this year with Vanderbilt and Florida still coming to Lexington. Alabama, Arkansas and Auburn all won at Rupp Arena last season. This season North Carolina, Missouri and Georgia have all done that.
Former UK coaches John Calipari, Tubby Smith and Eddie Sutton also had two-year runs where they lost five or more SEC home games — note that Gillespie did not do that.
The Georgia loss moved UK from the “lock” status to be in the NCAA Tournament to the “should be in” category along with 13 other teams when Neil Paine updated his NCAA projections Wednesday. He still has five SEC teams — Florida, Vanderbilt, Arkansas, Alabama and Tennessee — as locks and UK has to play two of them before the regular season ends.
KenPom projects Kentucky to win just one of its final five games, a Quad 2 game at South Carolina. If that happens, UK would go into SEC Tournament play 18-13 overall and 9-9 in conference play and that clearly would put the Cats on the NCAA Tournament bubble list after a second damaging home SEC loss.
