UK basketball fan has bold plan to spice up non-league, home schedule: Revenge games
Like many season-tickets-holding Kentucky Wildcats basketball fans, Tony Thomas has been uninspired by the quality of opponents UK has been bringing to Rupp Arena in the first month of the season.
The Lexington architect, who through his cousin, Kathleen Campbell, has seven Kentucky season tickets in Rupp, is the kind who likes to see all the family tickets used for each game.
This year, with UK’s early home schedule peppered with the likes of Lamar, Mount St. Mary’s and Saturday’s foe, Fairleigh Dickinson (2-5), Thomas reports having trouble even giving away his Kentucky basketball tickets.
“I’ve thrown a lot of tickets in the trash,” he says. “I can’t get people to take them.”
So Thomas, 56, has an idea for how UK can spice up its future early-season home schedules.
“UK should look back through the archives and find every team that we have a losing record against,” Thomas says. “We should schedule those teams until we get a winning record against all of them.”
A full-scale “revenge tour” approach to non-league scheduling by UK would almost certainly not be realistic.
There might be aspects of such a plan, however, that actually could make the first month of future Kentucky basketball seasons more interesting for Wildcats fans.
UK evens old scores?
If you dig deep enough into the Kentucky men’s basketball record book, the Wildcats have a losing record against some crazy names.
All-time, UK is 0-2 vs. the Cincinnati YMCA, 0-1 against the New Albany (Ind.) YMCA and 2-5 vs. the Lexington YMCA.
Kentucky is 0-4 against the basketball team from the Christ Church of Cincinnati — and the church is still swaggy about it.
According to The Cincinnati Enquirer, a timeline in the Christ Church Cathedral includes this entry: “1906-13: Church men’s basketball team defeats the University of Kentucky team four times.”
“We had to include that,” a church spokesman boasted last year to the Cincinnati newspaper.
The old Lexington High School — now known as Henry Clay — is 1-1 all-time vs. the Kentucky Wildcats.
“We can’t do anything now about the old YMCA teams that no longer have a legitimate team, but for the teams that are still out there (in Division I), I think Kentucky fans would get behind trying to have a winning record against everyone,” Thomas says.
A limited UK revenge tour
There are 20 current NCAA Division I men’s basketball teams that Kentucky has played at least once that UK does not have a winning record against.
Fourteen teams have a series lead over UK — Arizona (3-2), Connecticut (4-1), Evansville (1-0), Gardner-Webb (1-0), Georgetown (2-0), Louisiana (1-0), Memphis (1-0), Middle Tennessee State (1-0), North Carolina (24-16), Saint Louis (9-8), San Diego (1-0), Seton Hall (2-1), Southern California (3-0) and Texas at El Paso (nee Texas Western) (1-0).
The current major-college teams that have so far broken even against Kentucky include: Cornell (1-1), Detroit (1-1), Jacksonville (1-1), Marquette (7-7), Northwestern State (1-1) and UAB (3-3).
Obviously, the biggest names on those lists — Arizona, Connecticut, Georgetown, North Carolina, Southern California — are all but certainly not coming to Rupp Arena without promise of a return game.
In an era when Kentucky Coach John Calipari’s teams feature high levels of annual roster turnover, those are the kind of home-and-home matchups UK has not been willing to embrace as part of its November scheduling.
Calipari has emphasized he schedules in November with player development, not fan entertainment, paramount.
That philosophy could largely remain in place, however, and Kentucky could still try to liven up its November slate by scheduling around certain themes related to UK’s basketball past.
One year, you could bring back to Lexington schools that scored shocking upsets of the Wildcats in Rupp Arena — Gardner-Webb, San Diego, Evansville.
In another season, you could schedule off the idea of playing teams that have historically given Kentucky fits over multiple years — Saint Louis, Marquette (who would probably demand a return game), UAB.
For a third season, the first month of UK’s non-league schedule could be built around facing teams that pinned especially distressing NCAA tourney losses on the Cats — Jacksonville, Middle Tennessee, UTEP.
Those would reflect a “limited revenge tour” approach to UK scheduling.
Thomas has been attending Kentucky games since he was a child, sitting in the Memorial Coliseum “crow’s nest” with his uncle, Jack Yeaste.
Scheduling foes that UK “owes” for past defeats, Thomas thinks, would give at least the historically knowledgeable faction of the Kentucky fans base a reason to invest in the Cats’ future November home slates that did not exist in 2019-20.
“I think that would bring a lot of excitement to Rupp,” Thomas says. “Even if some of them are (now) lesser opponents, there is an added reason to play, and a reason it matters.”
