Return of the Denim: An iconic UK basketball look wasn’t beloved at the beginning
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kentucky wearing 1996 denim throwbacks for one game; merch sold fast.
- 1996 debut sparked debate over color and the denim material.
- Vendors sold denim-themed gear; current players welcomed the throwback.
The moment many Kentucky basketball fans have been waiting for has finally arrived.
And Collin Chandler got a sneak peek at the main attraction.
A few days before UK was set to unveil its one-game-only “denim” uniforms — a throwback to the jerseys worn by the 1996 national title team — Chandler revealed that he’d already gotten a glimpse of the threads he and his teammates would wear against Tennessee on Saturday night.
His review, on a scale of 1-10?
“I’ll give them a 10. Of course,” said Chandler, ever the team player.
A certain segment of fans has been pining for a return of the denims for a while now, especially since Mark Pope — a co-captain of that ’96 title team — was hired as the Wildcats’ head coach, even bringing his old 1996 jersey to show off at his introductory press conference.
UK announced Christmas morning that the iconic unis would be back for this weekend’s Tennessee game, serving as quite the gift for those who’d been wishing for this day to come.
“I think the fan base will love it,” Chandler declared. “It’ll be a good time to reminisce.”
The Kentucky guard turns 22 years old Monday, which means he was a little more than eight years away from being born when these jerseys were first worn by the Cats back on Feb. 11, 1996. A stroll down memory lane offers the reminder that — while the denims have grown in stature in the three decades since — the fan base had feelings other than love in the beginning.
In fact, those denims sparked a UK basketball civil war when they debuted 30 years ago.
“I’m amazed at how this uniform thing is totally overshadowing everything,” C.M. Newton, the UK athletics director at the time, said amid all the hubbub.
And there was hubbub aplenty.
Where to begin with the reminiscing? How about the color.
“There is a traditional Kentucky blue. And this isn’t it.”
That’s what Keith Cantrell had to say about it. And he wasn’t alone. A 33-year-old warehouse facilities manager from Shelby Gap — a small town near Pikeville — Cantrell was driving home from work the day after the denims debuted and decided to call in to coach Rick Pitino’s weekly radio show for the first time in his tenure as a lifelong Kentucky basketball fan.
That call did not go well.
Cantrell told the Herald-Leader at the time that he first complimented the coach on his team’s win over Arkansas on the previous day. “Then I said, ‘I’d like to ask you about the color of the uniform, has it changed?’ And I said, ‘I guess you’ve been hearing that all day.’”
Pitino, who had been involved in picking out the uniforms and had apparently heard plenty on the subject, was not amused. “And he made this (wise-guy) comment, ‘Why would I be hearing that, do you think I stand on the street corner all day?’”
Cantrell was so irked by the response that he called the Herald-Leader to complain.
“I’m feeling fairly embarrassed,” he told the newspaper. “I thought Coach Pitino took it a little personal, and it wasn’t intended that way at all. I thought he was fairly rude to me, and I didn’t appreciate it, not that he cares.”
Back then, there was no social media, of course, but Cantrell’s exchange with the coach of the Cats had gone viral all the same. He started getting calls from friends and family. At first, he denied it had been him who had called in to the show. Those on the other line weren’t buying it.
“So I had to admit it,” he said. “And they’ve been giving me a pretty good razzing.”
Even his wife, Tammy, was amused. Her reaction at the dustup when Cantrell got home to vent about the coach’s reply?
“She kind of chuckled,” he said. “I said, ‘It really wasn’t that damn funny.’ I wasn’t that pleased, you know, being chastised over statewide radio.”
Had the public rebuke from Pitino changed Cantrell’s feelings on the Cats at large?
“I’m not going to let one Yankee turn me against my team,” he said.
Kentucky, it should be noted, had a 20-1 record at the time. And the hottest topic in the commonwealth was what the Wildcats were wearing.
“The team must be doing pretty well if they’ve got nothing else to complain about,” longtime equipment manager Bill Keightley said then.
Kentucky’s denim uniforms
The UK basketball teams of the Pitino era were known for their eccentric stylings on the court.
“Those were the days of crazy uniforms,” former Kentucky guard Jeff Sheppard told the Herald-Leader this week. “It wasn’t like we went from wearing traditional uniforms to denim. As crazy as the denim jerseys were, those weren’t the craziest things we wore. I mean, all you gotta do is back up a little bit. We had some of the wildest-looking uniforms that existed.”
Point for Sheppard on that one. The Cats had indeed gone off the fashion rails earlier in the ’90s, with choices ranging from the “icicle” shorts design to a zig-zag pattern that was anything but traditional.
“Coach Pitino was always pushing the envelope from a marketing standpoint — something to differentiate Kentucky basketball from everyone else,” Sheppard said. “And he always did a great job with that.”
But to start that 1995-96 season, Pitino had all but promised to rein it in.
“We’re not going to be as funky as we have been,” the coach said at a Jefferson County UK Alumni Association luncheon a few weeks before the season opener.
It was promised at the time that — with the exception of the game against Arkansas on Feb. 11 — the Cats would sport a “clean, traditional look” for that season. The plan was for the high-profile matchup with Arkansas to feature the denim uniforms and shoes as part of a one-game-only promotion by Converse, which was UK’s apparel affiliate at the time.
By the time the Arkansas game rolled around, it had been decided that Kentucky would be wearing these denims for the entire stretch run of what turned out to be arguably the greatest season in UK basketball history.
The earliest reviews were less than glowing, and a Herald-Leader report from the time used the word “underwhelmed” to describe the feelings of the players themselves.
“I’ve got nothing to do with this,” junior guard Derek Anderson said. “I just have to wear it for two hours. If I got to keep it and wear it out, it’d be different.”
The Wildcats’ future head coach wasn’t exactly effusive in his praise either.
“If they want us to go out there naked or with snow shoes on, it wouldn’t matter to me,” Pope said. “I’m just excited to play.”
The national TV debut of the new digs didn’t go over as UK officials had hoped. The Kentucky-Arkansas game was called by Jim Nantz and Billy Packer, and both announcers were critical of the Cats’ clothing on air, opining that it looked more like North Carolina blue than the shade UK fans were used to.
And North Carolina, it should be noted, had knocked the Cats out of the NCAA Tournament the previous season.
After the game, Packer said he was approached by Martin Newton, who was both the son of the UK AD and the national marketing director at Converse, making him one of those responsible for ensuring that the denim rollout went well.
“The guy said, ‘You killed us, you killed us,’” Packer recalled at the time. “I said the uniforms just didn’t look like Kentucky blue to me. He said, ‘You’ve got to get with the times. That’s denim.’ I said I didn’t know denim was regulated to one color.”
Packer refused to apologize, saying he didn’t understand the controversy and standing by his comments on the hue of the denims. “It’s pretty evident what the color of the school is when you sit at any function that they have,” he said. “To have a uniform that doesn’t represent the school’s colors seems kind of screwy to me.”
Keightley — affectionately known as “Mr. Wildcat” and a staunch defender of all things UK basketball — didn’t take kindly to that. The equipment manager even set up a display — one denim jersey, one UNC-colored towel — so anyone who was curious could do a side-by-side comparison.
“Anybody who thinks that’s Carolina blue better have his eyes tested,” Keightley said at the time. “It’s not even close to Carolina blue. Not even in the ballpark.”
Pope got involved at this point, too. He referenced a recent newspaper article that had pictures of past UK uniforms and said he thought the denim colors looked the same as the other jerseys.
The CBS announcer, who died in 2023, was about to turn 56 years old later that month, and the UK co-captain implied that perhaps his eyes were starting to fail him.
“I know Billy Packer’s getting a little older,” Pope said.
UK basketball denim for sale
One reason for all the angst on UK’s end undoubtedly had to do with the work that had been put in to bring the denims to the basketball court.
The previous summer, the team had embarked on a five-game exhibition tour of Italy, and a couple of prototype uniforms were used in preparation for that trip.
To check how the fabric would retain moisture, UK stars Tony Delk and Walter McCarty wore them during practice. The uniforms “were weighed after sweating as well as before,” Pitino said. “That’s why we changed the dark (away) uniforms, because after sweating they were too heavy.”
The coach said UK officials also objected to the original color of the away uniforms, which were apparently an even lighter shade than the final product. “They first came out Carolina blue,” Pitino said. “Then we got it to Kentucky blue. We’re excited about that.”
Obviously, a vocal segment of UK fans would come to disagree with that assessment.
As for the material, the home jerseys did, in fact, incorporate actual denim into the design as part of the blue trim. A spokesperson for Converse at the time said the company had to switch to a “pseudo-denim mesh” material on the darker away uniforms because denim weighed too much.
The lightweight denim had a soft feel, according to Ryan Boyd, who was the manager of Allied Sporting Goods in Regency Centre in Lexington. “It’s not like they’re cutting up Levi’s and putting them on there,” he told the Herald-Leader amid the rollout.
Despite the controversy, the denims were in demand for some fans who wanted to dress like the Kentucky team that was killing the competition at the time.
In the first 24 hours or so after their unveiling, more than 140 pairs of the denim shorts had been sold — at $59.99 a pop (in 1996 money) — at Kentucky Korner, the old UK-themed sportswear store that used to be connected to Rupp Arena as part of the Civic Center Shops.
The denim-themed line also included $80 jersey tops and $70 shoes, plus T-shirts, hats, button-down shirts and jackets.
As part of its apparel deal, UK received a 6% royalty on the wholesale price of each item sold, with the money split between the university and the school’s athletics association. The rest of the revenue went to Converse and the retailers.
UK switched its apparel partnership from Converse to Nike for the 1997-98 season, and the Wildcats have been affiliated with the shoe giant ever since.
Three decades later, this latest round of denim nostalgia can also be found on store shelves and through online retailers. A quiet launch on the Rally House website — featuring a handful of T-shirt designs, each with a denim shade and a Nike swoosh on the front — sold out quickly. (Most items had been restocked the following day.)
The official UK team shop also featured a new drop this week, and that one included player-specific, denim-themed shirts with the names and numbers of more recent UK greats like Devin Booker and Anthony Davis. That batch was also selling fast, according to the online inventory numbers.
A few months ago, Nike released a “Blue Blood” colorway of Booker’s signature shoe — the popular “Book 1” design — that incorporated the denim theme.
The new Cats who weren’t around for the old controversy are excited to represent a unique chapter in the program’s history Saturday night.
“I mean, I’m a fan,” said sophomore forward Trent Noah, who was born about a decade after the denim era. “I like how, also, a lot of different clothing brands are pushing out just regular stuff in denim, like hats. And then the Books came out — the denim Books. I’m a fan of it. I like it. I’m excited to wear them.”
That seems to be the overwhelming sentiment in 2026. But, 30 years ago, Noah’s coach was getting ready to put on the same thing while sitting in the middle of a different situation.
Everyone could agree back then that the Wildcats themselves were something special. As far as what they were wearing, opinions differed.
But even at 23 years old, Pope knew the score.
“Everybody’s trying to make a buck here or there,” he said in 1996. “It doesn’t affect us. If it says ‘Kentucky,’ that’s all that matters.”
This story was originally published February 5, 2026 at 6:30 AM.
