Kentucky’s current streak against its next opponent is absurd. Can the Cats keep it going?
In addition to the opportunity for a bounce-back win early in this grueling SEC basketball season, yet another victory over a Top 25 team and some positive momentum heading into a dangerous stretch on the schedule, something else will be on the line for Kentucky this weekend in Starkville.
When the No. 6-ranked Wildcats go on the road to face No. 14 Mississippi State on Saturday night, they’ll be bringing with them one of the most impressive winning streaks in program history.
UK has defeated the Bulldogs in 18 consecutive regular-season games, a stretch that lasted for the entirety of the John Calipari era, and one that Mark Pope would obviously like to keep going with a 19th straight victory in the series.
As it stands, Kentucky’s current win streak over Mississippi State is tied for fourth among the program’s longest against SEC teams. No. 1 on that list is probably insurmountable. UK defeated Ole Miss 35 straight times in the regular season from 1929 — one year before Adolph Rupp became head coach of the Wildcats — until 1972, which was Rupp’s final season on the job. (A 4-0 postseason record vs. the Rebels in that span made it a 39-game winning streak overall.)
Next on the list of regular-season win streaks is a 23-gamer against Vanderbilt (1940-55) followed by 19 consecutive victories over the Georgia Bulldogs (1950-66). The current win streak over Mississippi State is tied with UK’s 18 straight victories over Tennessee from 1950 through 1960.
The obvious theme of the other streaks at the top of the list: they all came during the Rupp era, when the Wildcats ran roughshod over the SEC on an annual basis. If Kentucky can defeat Mississippi State on Saturday for its 19th consecutive regular-season win in the series, it will be the longest such streak against an SEC team in the post-Rupp era.
Right now, the current run against the Bulldogs is tied with a pair of 18-game winning streaks over Vanderbilt (1979-87 and 1993-2002) as the longest within the conference since Joe B. Hall replaced Rupp as UK’s head coach 53 years ago.
And Calipari and the Cats managed to keep this thing going against some decent competition.
Mississippi State has made three NCAA Tournament fields and was picked for the NIT five other times in the 15 seasons since its skid against Kentucky began. The Bulldogs have finished no worse than 8-10 in the conference in any of the past seven seasons.
UK did lose to Mississippi State once during this run — a 74-73 defeat in the 2021 SEC Tournament amid COVID-19 restrictions, a loss that ended the worst season of Calipari’s tenure — but that one came in the postseason.
The regular season has been all Wildcats.
Kentucky’s most recent victory in the series featured the best performance of Reed Sheppard’s college career — 32 points, seven assists and the game-winning shot in Starkville last season — and the Cats have won three overtime games during the span. Perhaps the most memorable in that bunch: Dontaie Allen’s brief star turn — 23 points and seven 3-pointers out of nowhere in a double-OT win, after Calipari was ejected — during that otherwise forgettable 2020-21 season.
The last time Mississippi State beat Kentucky in the regular season came in Rupp Arena during Billy Gillispie’s second and final year as head coach. The last time the Cats lost in Starkville came the previous season, Gillispie’s first with the team. That was 17 years ago.
Kentucky’s SEC road win streaks
UK’s current run in Humphrey Coliseum also ranks among the best of its kind in program history.
The Cats have won nine straight games in The Hump dating back to 2007, and that’s already the longest streak over an SEC opponent on its home court in the post-Rupp era.
Kentucky had 11-game road winning streaks under Rupp against both Tennessee (1951-62) and Vanderbilt (1941-55) and a 10-game streak in Starkville from 1966 to 1975, with Hall winning the final three games in that stretch. (UK’s ridiculous winning streak over Ole Miss that spanned the duration of the Rupp era included only seven victories in Oxford, with the Rebels playing the Cats in Jackson and Memphis a total of seven times during that stretch.)
The current run at Mississippi State is next on the all-time list, which also includes an eight-game-and-counting winning streak over Vanderbilt in Memorial Gym, where UK will play Jan. 25.
To win 10 in a row in Starkville, Pope’s Wildcats might need the best showing by a Kentucky team since this run began.
While the Bulldogs have been respectable for most of this stretch — and only one of their nine losses to UK in Starkville has come by more than 10 points — just once during this 18-game losing skid has Mississippi State been ranked in a game against Kentucky. That one came in 2019 in Rupp Arena, where the No. 8 Cats beat the No. 22 Bulldogs 76-55, strangely the second-most lopsided game during this streak. (UK won by just four points two and half weeks later in Starkville.)
The game Saturday night won’t be easy. Mississippi State is No. 14 in the country, the highest the Bulldogs have been in the AP Top 25 poll for a game in this series since they were ranked No. 12 in 1996, when Pope was a player, UK won the national title and Mississippi State advanced to its only Final Four.
The prominent college basketball analytics websites say Kentucky’s streak of dominance over the Dogs is coming to an end this weekend. Following Tuesday night’s games, the KenPom projections had Mississippi State beating UK 84-79, with the Torvik numbers predicting an 85-80 loss for the Wildcats.
While the Bulldogs have boasted one of the nation’s best defenses since Chris Jans became head coach three years ago, they have a scoring attack to match this time around, with Mississippi State ranked No. 17 in offensive efficiency, according to KenPom.
Sophomore guard Josh Hubbard, who scored 34 points against Kentucky in that shootout in Starkville last season, is back, and he’s leading the team with 17.1 points per game. Hubbard is tied with Koby Brea for second place in the SEC with 47 3-pointers, and he’s rated by Torvik as the No. 2 player in the league, behind only Auburn star Johni Broome. Meanwhile, another prominent analytics site — EvanMiya.com — ranks fifth-year forward Cameron Matthews (2.5 steals per game) as the best defender in the SEC.
With the Wildcats coming off a clunker of a loss — 82-69 at Georgia on Tuesday night — some positive momentum would be welcomed, especially with what’s on the horizon: games against No. 10 Texas A&M and No. 5 Alabama in Rupp Arena next week.
Getting to that spot on the schedule with their impressive win streak over Mississippi State intact will be one tall task.
Next game
No. 6 Kentucky at No. 14 Mississippi State
When: 8:30 p.m. EST Saturday
TV: SEC Network
Radio: WLAP-AM 630, WBUL-FM 98.1
Records: Kentucky 12-3 (1-1 SEC), Mississippi State 14-1 (2-0)
Series: Kentucky leads 103-21
Last meeting: Kentucky won 91-89 on Feb. 27, 2024, in Starkville, Mississippi
This story was originally published January 9, 2025 at 6:30 AM.
