Mark Pope has a shot to make a little Kentucky basketball history against No. 1 Auburn
This weekend, Mark Pope can become the first Kentucky basketball coach to achieve a rare feat.
The No. 1-ranked Auburn Tigers will meet the Wildcats in Rupp Arena at 1 p.m EST Saturday — in a nationally televised game on ABC — and it will be Pope’s first shot at the top-ranked team in the country as UK’s head coach.
No leader of the Wildcats has ever won his first regular-season game against the nation’s No. 1 team.
The Associated Press poll for men’s college basketball was first launched in January 1949, and this will be the 25th time that Kentucky has faced the team at the very top of it. The Cats are 8-16 in their previous games against the No. 1 team in the country.
▪ Adolph Rupp played against the nation’s No. 1 team only twice. Both were losses in the NCAA Tournament to Ohio State — in 1961 and 1962 — and he never got an opportunity for such a game in the regular season.
▪ Joe B. Hall’s first regular-season game against the No. 1 team in the country was a 77-68 overtime loss in 1975 to eventual national champion Indiana, which went on to an undefeated season. Michigan was the only other team to take Bob Knight’s Hoosiers to overtime that season. Hall was ultimately 2-3 vs. No. 1 teams, including a win over then-undefeated Indiana in the 1975 NCAA Tournament.
▪ Eddie Sutton had just one opportunity against the nation’s top team, an 80-55 loss to Duke in the 1988-89 season opener. That was Christian Laettner’s first college game.
▪ Rick Pitino never coached against the No. 1 team in the country in the regular season in his eight years at Kentucky. He lost his first such NCAA Tournament matchup — the 104-103 overtime defeat to Duke, on Laettner’s buzzer-beating shot in the 1992 Elite Eight — before beating Arkansas in the 1994 SEC Tournament semifinals and top-ranked UMass (coached by John Calipari) in the 1996 Final Four.
▪ Tubby Smith had a 1-3 record against the nation’s No. 1 teams, all four of those games coming in the regular season. His first such matchup came in his third game as Kentucky’s coach, an 89-74 loss in the 1997 Maui Invitational to Arizona, which had defeated UK in the national title game the previous season, Pitino’s final outing as UK’s head coach. Smith’s only win came in Rupp Arena over Billy Donovan and Florida in 2003 — the Cats’ first home game against the nation’s top team since 1979.
▪ Billy Gillispie had three chances in just two seasons as coach, but he lost all of them — two against North Carolina and one at Tennessee.
▪ And Calipari had the most opportunities. He was 3-3 in his six games against the No. 1-ranked team, winning his first — the 2011 Sweet 16 victory over Ohio State en route to UK’s Final Four appearance that year — but dropping his first regular-season game, an 84-65 loss at Florida in 2014. (The Cats also went to the Final Four that season.) Calipari’s final opportunity came in his last season as head coach, an 89-84 loss to No. 1 Kansas in the Champions Classic.
Pope has coached against the nation’s No. 1 team four times previously in his career, but his teams were at a decided disadvantage in each of those games. His Utah Valley Wolverines lost 99-69 to Duke in Cameron Indoor Stadium in his third season there. And Pope faced No. 1 Gonzaga four times over his first two seasons at BYU, losing all of those games.
His short UK tenure so far has been highlighted by four wins over teams currently ranked in the AP top five — No. 2 Duke, No. 3 Florida and No. 5 Tennessee twice — but this will be his first shot at the nation’s No. 1 team.
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Kentucky basketball vs. No. 1 Auburn
Bruce Pearl’s Auburn Tigers will obviously be a stiff test for Pope’s 17th-ranked Wildcats.
Auburn (26-2, 14-1 SEC) has now been ranked No. 1 for seven consecutive weeks. The Tigers’ only losses this season have come at Duke and to Florida — the No. 2 and 3 teams in this week’s AP Top 25 poll. They have the No. 1 offense in the country, according to the KenPom ratings, but will also enter the weekend with a defense that’s ranked in the top 15 nationally.
Former Morehead State star Johni Broome — now in his third and final season at Auburn — is still running alongside Duke’s Cooper Flagg for national player of the year honors, and he appears to be a clear choice to be named the SEC player of the year and a first-team All-American, no matter what happens over the rest of this season.
But Broome isn’t alone. Five other Auburn players — Chad Baker-Mazara, Tahaad Pettiford, Denver Jones, Miles Kelly, Chaney Johnson — are averaging in double figures scoring, and 6-foot-11, 255-pound center Dylan Cardwell is rated as one of the best defensive players in all of college basketball.
The Tigers have size, strength and skill galore, and — even with the Rupp Arena advantage — it’s likely going to take an exemplary performance for the Cats to beat them Saturday.
If they can, Pope will become the first UK coach in history to knock off the No. 1 team in his first regular-season attempt.
