One major change for UK basketball in the Pope era? The Rupp Arena fans are more into it.
After a grueling pair of games on the SEC road, the Kentucky Wildcats are back in Lexington for two matchups on their home court this week.
The competition won’t get any easier — No. 11 Texas A&M on Tuesday night and fourth-ranked Alabama at noon Saturday — but at least the No. 8 Cats will be playing in the friendly confines of Rupp Arena.
And the building has been mighty friendly indeed to Mark Pope’s team.
In a season filled with changes around the UK men’s basketball program, the most visible on home game days has taken place off of the court itself.
Want to get a real feel for how the transition from John Calipari’s tenure to the Pope era has been received by UK fans? Simply open your eyes and ears in Rupp when the Cats are playing. The evidence will be all around you.
Perhaps the perfect example so far: Kentucky’s game a couple of weeks ago against Brown, a midpack team in the Ivy League. The Bears came to Lexington off a 34-point loss at Kansas. The Cats returned home from an extended holiday break for their first game since a 20-point loss to Ohio State, the clear low point of their season.
The UK-Brown game took place at a weird time (2 p.m. on a Tuesday) and a day (New Year’s Eve) when people surely had other plans. The timing and circumstances seemed ripe for Rupp to be at less than its best by the time tipoff arrived.
A year ago, it almost certainly would have been.
Back then, that section in the upper level — looking down on the baseline that the visiting team shoots at in the first half — would have been peppered with empty seats by the time the game started. There might’ve even been more bleachers visible than butts to fill them, as was often the case when the Cats hosted unexciting nonconference foes late in the Calipari era.
Two weeks ago against Brown — around 30 minutes before tipoff — that section was full.
When Kentucky’s team took the court for the final round of pregame layups, the place erupted. It was as if many in the crowd that day had never seen a game in Rupp Arena. Maybe that was the case. More likely — since that’s been the scene all season in the home of the Wildcats — it’s that Kentucky fans are seeing Kentucky basketball in a different light these days.
The praise for the UK crowd on home days has been rolling in since the season began more than two months ago. How do the players on the court feel about what they’re seeing?
Kentucky kid Travis Perry — the reigning Mr. Basketball, who broke the state’s all-time scoring record on the Rupp court and is the only holdover recruit from Calipari’s final UK class — was asked after that Brown game if this experience of playing for the Cats has been all he expected, even when he was barely playing at all.
“It’s been a lot of fun,” he quickly affirmed. “You know, there’s not many places you can go — actually, there’s probably no places you can go — and have a 2 p.m. New Year’s Eve game with 20,000 people in there. It’s just unlike any other place you could be at.”
Not only were they there, they were there early and raring to go.
A year ago — coming off a 20-point loss on a day with other stuff to do — the mood would have been different.
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An old, familiar feeling in Rupp
Make no mistake, there were plenty of high-decibel moments within the walls of Rupp Arena in the past few years, too. The place was deafening during Zvonimir Ivisic’s electric debut in a 105-96 win over Georgia and Justin Edwards’ perfect day in a 117-95 beatdown of Alabama last year.
Reed Sheppard and the rest of the Cats had Rupp rocking earlier in the season as they ran then-No. 8 Miami out of the building, getting UK fans skeptical of yet another bunch of talented-but-unproven freshmen to buy in yet again, even if they feared how it might end.
Just four days after that 22-point win over a top-10 team, UK lost to UNC-Wilmington in Rupp.
And that wasn’t an uncommon series of events in Calipari’s final years. The teams had plenty of talent, and they even did plenty of winning, but there were enough duds toward the end that the home fans seemingly walked into Rupp already in a restless mood.
There were those empty seats in the upper levels. There were audible moans and groans as the Cats worked out their shortcomings in front of everyone. Students were disinterested — or didn’t show at all — to the point that Calipari actually met with groups on campus to brainstorm ways to get the college kids more excited over UK basketball.
The highs could still reach the stratosphere, but the lows were getting lower and lower each year. And many had seen enough.
In the nine months since Pope’s introductory press conference — Tuesday marks the anniversary of that surreal event — Rupp has been home to the celebratory return of Rick Pitino, packed crowds for every opponent and scenes like the New Year’s Eve party before the Brown game even began.
Four days after that one, Florida came to town. The Gators were ranked No. 6 in the country and hadn’t lost a game. Kentucky was 9-0 on its home court but hadn’t yet faced a Top 25 foe there.
It was another odd start time — 11 a.m., thought to be the earliest ever for a UK home game — but the traffic on High Street must’ve cleared well before then, because the place was full by tipoff. Everybody was in their seats early and ready to go.
“Honestly, it felt amazing,” UK guard Koby Brea said after UK defeated Florida 106-100. “Just being able to look up into the stands and just seeing the whole gym was crowded, you know, and everybody was super excited for the game, and it was super loud in there.”
Brea, feeding off that energy, had career highs of 23 points and seven 3-pointers. He called it “super unbelievable” to be able to play in that atmosphere and said the game itself was “the loudest I’ve probably heard it all year.”
Courtside for ESPN that day was Dan Shulman, who’s been calling games for longer than Brea has been alive and has worked his fair share in Rupp Arena. He posted his thoughts on X afterward: “I’ve been doing this 30 years. I can count on one hand where both the game and the environment were as good as they were today at Rupp for Kentucky-Florida. College basketball at its best.”
It wasn’t just the sheer volume that was different on that day. It was the noise itself — against Florida and during all of the games of the past couple of months — that sounded different.
As the Cats and Gators prepared for tipoff, UK’s cheerleaders were on the court leading the crowd in a “C-A-T-S!” chant, each quadrant of the building getting its own letter to chant. There have been a lot more honorary “Y’s” this season than in recent years. “Mony Mony” has blared during timeouts. The “Blue! White!” chant has spontaneously bounced back and forth across the court.
To anyone who attended games in Rupp going back a decade or two or more — say, when Pope himself was wearing a Kentucky uniform — these are familiar references. To anyone else, it all might sound like a foreign language.
Who knows what it will sound like when Calipari returns to Rupp on Feb. 1 with his Arkansas Razorbacks, many of whom played for UK last year or were committed to be Cats this season. Until that day comes, the new keepers of Kentucky basketball are enjoying the only Rupp Arena atmosphere they’ve ever known.
“It’s crazy,” UK forward Ansley Almonor said of the general vibe before games. “You feel the energy when you walk out on the court. It’s basically full by the time we come out there for the last warm-ups, and we see the flashing lights and the crowd and the music. It’s just a great feeling, you know? It’s the best feeling in the world.”
‘An extraordinary place’ for Pope
Following the win over Florida, starting point guard Lamont Butler said the crowd gave the Cats energy throughout the roller-coaster game, adding that he and his teammates would “lean on them” all season.
In that victory, Butler had two steals that he immediately turned into buckets during a flurry late in the first half that sent Kentucky to the locker room with a 52-42 advantage. One of the best perimeter defenders in college basketball, Butler said he’d noticed the Rupp fans’ genuine appreciation of that side of the ball.
“Oh, definitely,” he said. “I mean, I think that makes us want to guard even harder, because we know that the crowd loves it. So it’s definitely not everywhere you play at that people are cheering loudly for the defensive end.
“So we definitely love it, and we hope it continues throughout the year.”
After every home game this season, Pope has had his players show their appreciation by walking the perimeter of the court and greeting the fans. The coach often stands near the tunnel to watch the interactions — “My Old Kentucky Home” has been played by the UK band on some of those occasions — before he exits the court area himself, usually waving to the crowd and high-fiving students on his way out.
For this SEC schedule, the Cats will need all the help they can get. Plenty more formidable foes will enter Rupp Arena after Texas A&M and Alabama come through this week. The remaining home schedule also features No. 1 Auburn and No. 6 Tennessee, plus dates with LSU, South Carolina, Vanderbilt and Calipari’s Razorbacks, all dangerous enough to give UK a run.
And the Cats, who enter this week with a 10-0 record in Rupp, will need to hold serve as best they can, with SEC road wins like the one at Mississippi State on Saturday night sure to be a challenge, no matter the opponent.
Beating Kentucky on its home court is bound to be a challenge, too.
Another change from the past: Pope’s squad is practicing in the building a lot more than Calipari’s teams, who almost always worked out in the Joe Craft Center on campus. Current UK players and assistant coaches have reacted with confusion when asked about that switch, assuming what they’ve been doing this season is how things have always been done in the past.
And while these Cats have plenty of practices on campus, too, they’re clearly feeling right at home in Rupp, even on those occasions when they walk into an empty building.
Two days before the Florida game, Pope’s weekly press conference was moved from its normal location — the Memorial Coliseum media room, near the Craft Center court — to Rupp, where the Cats would be holding an early practice that day in anticipation of the 11 a.m. tipoff.
Even on that Thursday morning — 48 hours on either side of a game and the cavernous arena all but empty — Pope felt the magic of the place.
“I’ll tell you what’s great is you can’t walk in this building and not feel something. It’s unbelievable,” he said. “You know, you get in the grind of the season, and you still walk in here like, ‘Wow! Like, we get to be in Rupp today.’ I mean, come on, it’s incredible.
“So, this building is an extraordinary place. And you can’t walk into this place without feeling the history and the tradition and the responsibility. Now our guys walk in here, and every time they walk into this gym, they see. For practice, they see that it’s empty in the stands, but they can hear it and feel it, and it was just 48 hours ago where this place was rocking. And even when you walk in empty, you feel that. It’s pretty cool.”
This story was originally published January 14, 2025 at 4:55 AM.
