Most shocking defeat in Kentucky history? Evansville is close, but it’s not No. 1.
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An out-of-the-blue defeat: Evansville 67, No. 1 Kentucky 64
Read all of the Herald-Leader’s coverage on Kentucky.com of the Wildcats’ unexpected defeat in Rupp Arena at the hands of former UK player Walter McCarty and his Evansville Purple Aces on Tuesday night.
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When lightly regarded Georgia Tech did the unthinkable and snapped Kentucky’s 129-game home win streak with a 59-58 upset on Jan. 8, 1955, legend holds that the Memorial Coliseum crowd fell into a shocked silence.
I thought of that Tuesday night as stunned Kentucky fans filed out of Rupp Arena after Evansville — 11-21 a season ago — had done the unthinkable with a 67-64 victory over No. 1 Kentucky.
The only noise in the entire arena came from the contingent of Purple Aces fans who were in Rupp, it turned out, to witness their team produce a hoops miracle.
Their boisterous celebration continued long after the game had ended.
In ranking the 10 most shocking Kentucky Wildcats men’s basketball losses of all time, both upsets that left UK fans silent — though separated by more than six decades — rank high.
10. Robert Morris 59, Kentucky 57, 2013 NIT
UK had lost its best player, Nerlens Noel, to a season-ending injury in mid-February. The Wildcats had then played their way out of NCAA Tournament contention by losing three of their final four games.
Yet even if the 2012-13 Cats (21-12) were not a vintage Kentucky team, it was jarring to see their season ended by a program from the Northeast Conference.
9. Penn State 73, No. 22 Kentucky 68, 2000-01 regular season
Among major-conference men’s basketball programs, few have a more vanilla profile than Penn State. Yet on Nov. 25, 2000, a brother act, Joe Crispin (31 points on 7-of-15 three-point shooting) and Jon Crispin (26 points on 9-of-12 shooting), led the Nittany Lions to a stunner over Tubby Smith’s Cats.
8. VMI 111, Kentucky 103, 2008-09 regular season
During the ill-fated, two-year Billy Gillispie coaching era at Kentucky, the Wildcats created some major “life memories” for mid-major programs in Rupp Arena. VMI Coach Duggar Baucom and the Keydets brought a rip-and-run playing style to Lexington and withstood a 39-point outburst from UK’s Jodie Meeks by hitting 14 of 31 three-point shots and forcing Kentucky into a whopping 25 turnovers.
7. No. 2 Kansas 150, Kentucky 95, 1989-90 regular season
With UK on NCAA probation due to an Eddie Sutton-era recruiting scandal and with the Cats featuring only eight scholarship players, everyone expected new Kentucky Coach Rick Pitino’s first Wildcats team to take some lumps. Nevertheless, it was still horrifying when Roy Williams and Kansas hung 150 points on the short-handed Cats in Pitino’s fifth game.
6. Gardner-Webb 84, Kentucky 68, 2007-08 regular season
Billy Gillispie’s second game as UK head coach fell on his 48th birthday. Gardner-Webb, which had been picked to finish eighth in the Atlantic Sun Conference, ruined the party. The Runnin’ Bulldogs sashayed into Rupp Arena and hit 53 percent of their shots while holding Kentucky to 35.5 percent.
5. No. 10 St. John’s 64, No. 1 Kentucky 57, 1952 NCAA Tournament
In December, Kentucky played host to St. John’s for a much-hyped showdown of the nation’s No. 1- and No. 2-rated teams. The top-ranked Cats humiliated second-rated St. John’s, 81-40. After such a decisive win, UK backers were blindsided when Coach Frank McGuire and Co. turned the tables on Adolph Rupp’s Cats when it mattered.
4. No. 7 Western Kentucky 107, No. 8 Kentucky 83, 1971 NCAA Tournament
Adolph Rupp’s long-standing policy of UK not playing other in-state teams served to reinforce Kentucky’s aura of superiority. So even though Western entered the 1971 NCAA tourney meeting with UK ranked one spot ahead of Rupp’s Cats, seeing Kentucky run out of the gym by another state school was disorienting to a generation of the commonwealth’s hoops fans. The Jim McDaniels-led Hilltoppers then backed up their pounding of UK by advancing to the 1971 Final Four.
3. Middle Tennessee State 50, No. 15 Kentucky 44, 1982 NCAA Tournament
In an era before Kentucky and Louisville played in the regular season, the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee had taken things into its own hands. A UK victory over MTSU would have set up a Cats-Cards meeting in the following round.
Instead, Coach Stan Simpson’s Blue Raiders dominated Kentucky on the glass (36-27) and won the game at the foul line (made 10 of 18 free throws compared to two of two for UK).
2. Evansville 67, No. 1 Kentucky 64, 2019-20 regular season
The week before, UK had opened its season by knocking off then-No. 1-ranked Michigan State. The game with Evansville — a team which went 11-21 in 2018-19 — was supposed to be nothing more than a warm homecoming for Purple Aces Coach Walter McCarty, a former Wildcats standout.
Instead, McCarty came back to Lexington with a smart game plan that controlled tempo and a team tough enough to execute it.
1. Georgia Tech 59, No. 1 Kentucky 58, 1954-55 regular season
Before the night of Jan. 8, 1955, Adolph Rupp’s Wildcats had not lost a home game since falling to Ohio State, 45-40, on Jan. 2, 1943 — a span of more than 12 years.
Many in the Memorial Coliseum crowd of 8,500 to watch the Cats face Georgia Tech had literally never seen Kentucky lose in person.
Yet, not only did UK lose, the Cats fell to a Georgia Tech team came into the game winless (0-3) and which had gone 2-22 the prior season.
As stunning as the Evansville loss was, the defeat that ended UK’s 129-game home win streak remains the most shocking loss ever by the Wildcats.
This story was originally published November 13, 2019 at 1:51 AM.
