UK basketball could get green light this week for a new practice facility
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- UK Board of Trustees may approve predesign process for new multi-use facility.
- Proposed complex could house basketball practice space and sports medicine hub.
- Predesign phase would cost $1M and determine site, floor plans and project scope.
The University of Kentucky men’s basketball team could be moving into a new home.
The UK Board of Trustees athletics committee is holding a meeting Thursday, and one of the items on the agenda is a recommendation to approve the initiation of a “predesign” process for “a new multi-use facility” that could include a basketball facility as well as a new UK HealthCare Sports Medicine ambulatory space, sports-related research space and other related areas.
The location of this facility would be determined during the predesign phase but is expected to be part of the proposed fan entertainment district near Kroger Field. A study related to that project was approved during a UK Board of Trustees meeting in June.
There’s also no approximate price tag for the project that would include the new basketball practice facility. That would be determined during the predesign phase, which has an estimated cost of $1 million and would also result in floor plans and conceptual renderings for the proposed multi-use facility.
Champions Blue, the nonprofit LLC that was recently created to oversee the UK athletics department, met Tuesday morning. At that meeting, a resolution requested by athletics director Mitch Barnhart to initiate the predesign phase of the project was approved with no dissenting votes.
The Board of Trustees must now approve the plan for that predesign process before the project can move forward.
The proposed project could resemble the Emory Sports Medicine Complex in Atlanta. That 90,000-square-foot facility — which opened in 2017 and cost a reported $50 million — contains the training and practice facilities for the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks, as well as Emory’s Sports Medicine program and Sports Science and Research division.
A similar project — the Cleveland Clinic Global Peak Performance Center — is currently under construction as a new practice and training home for the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers. That facility, which will also include an advanced sports medicine hub, is scheduled to open in 2027 and is the first major piece of a much larger construction effort that has an estimated cost of $3.5 billion.
The UK men’s basketball team currently practices in the Joe Craft Center, which was opened in 2007 at a cost of $30 million. The Craft Center was built as an attachment to Memorial Coliseum and also features a practice court for the women’s basketball team.
The coaches’ offices for both basketball programs are also stationed in the Craft Center, which contains locker rooms, video rooms and lounges for both teams, as well as a weight room and offices for other athletics department officials, including UK athletics director Mitch Barnhart.
Moving the men’s basketball program out of the Craft Center would free up more space for women’s sports programs that play home games in Memorial Coliseum, but one of the goals of the design phase for the new facility will be to determine if the women’s basketball program would also move to the new facility.
Before moving to the Craft Center, the Wildcats practiced in Memorial Coliseum, which became the team’s home on game days starting with the 1950-51 basketball season and remained the program’s primary practice gym after Rupp Arena opened in 1976.
The Joe Craft Center was billed as a state-of-the-art facility when it opened during the 2006-07 season, which was Tubby Smith’s final year as head coach of the Wildcats.
More recently, John Calipari lamented the state of the facility in a 2022 interview session during the team’s summer trip to the Bahamas, using the occasion to publicly lobby — in a common rallying cry from the UK coach that summer — for a new practice home to take the place of a building that was only 15 years old at the time.
Calipari’s plan included a museum dedicated to the UK men’s basketball program as a cornerstone of a new facility that would celebrate the Wildcats’ place atop the sport. He cited then-recent multi-million dollar facility upgrades for the university’s football program — as well as other UK sports — as part of his argument that it was time for men’s basketball to get its share from the facilities budget.
It was during that interview that Calipari dropped his “this is a basketball school” comment that led to a war of words within the athletic department. UK football coach Mark Stoops clapped back at Calipari on social media and then in a press conference that also featured a lengthy segment in which Barnhart attempted to quell the feud.
Calipari left Kentucky for Arkansas following the 2023-24 season.
His replacement, current UK head coach Mark Pope, has not said much publicly on the possibility of a new practice gym during a time in which changes to NIL rules and new revenue-sharing responsibilities have put more emphasis on opening up financial avenues for current players to make money that might otherwise go toward facility upgrades.
Pope was asked about the subject during his final radio show to wrap up the 2024-25 season in March, however, and he teased that night that something might be in the works.
“Our administration is always working hard ahead, so that is certainly past the ‘just imagining’ phase,” Pope said. “Still, there’s a bunch of hurdles to cross and priorities that we have to refocus in this really dynamic, changing landscape of college athletics. But that’s something that is definitely in the working stages.”
This story was originally published September 8, 2025 at 10:19 PM.
