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After a shocking 80-76 NCAA Tournament first round upset loss to Oakland, Kentucky suffered its second significant March Madness upset in three years. But that's not always been the case at Kentucky. The Wildcats' eight NCAA titles are second only to UCLA. Furthermore, Kentucky's 17 Final Four appearances tie for the third-most of all time.
Here's a deeper dive into Kentucky's March Madness history.
Kentucky's journey through NCAA Tournament history
The early years
Under coach Adolph Rupp, Kentucky was a strong presence in even the early years of the NCAA Tournament. Rupp and the Wildcats made the program's first Final Four in 1942, just the third year of the Tournament. With a high-speed style of play, Rupp and Kentucky came to dominate the sport.
Kentucky won the 1948, 1949 and 1951 NCAA titles. That said, Kentucky's participation in the 1950 NCAA Tournament was ultimately tainted by a point-shaving scandal. As a result of an NCAA investigation, Kentucky was barred from play in 1953. In 1954, Kentucky had an undefeated regular season but declined the NCAA Tournament when the team's seniors were ruled ineligible.
Rupp won another championship with an unlikely team in 1958, but struggled later in his career to combat charges of racism. Kentucky was the second team in the SEC to integrate.
The years after Rupp
Rupp's assistant, Joe B. Hall, was hired in 1972 to follow him. Hall had a memorable 1975 season, when his Wildcats beat No. 1 and unbeaten Indiana in a regional final only to lose the NCAA title to John Wooden in his final game. Kentucky won the title in 1978 and had a good chance in 1984, when Georgetown and Patrick Ewing bested UK in the national semifinals.
Hall retired in 1985 and was followed by Eddie Sutton. An ugly probation scandal chased away most of Sutton's best players and led UK to its first losing season since 1927 in 1989, when Kentucky went 13-19. Sutton was fired and Kentucky seemed far from its prior glory.
Pitino and Tubby
Kentucky then hired New York Knicks coach Rick Pitino to resurrect the program. Despite NCAA probation, Pitino returned Kentucky to the Final Four by 1993. He led Kentucky to the 1996 NCAA title and lost the 1997 title game in overtime to Arizona. Pitino was lured away by the Boston Celtics, although he subsequently returned to college at Kentucky's archrival, the University of Louisville.
Former Pitino assistant Tubby Smith then followed. Smith was Kentucky's first African-American coach and he won the NCAA title in 1998, in his first season. Smith's run included multiple comeback wins, like an 18-point comeback in a regional final win over Duke and a 10-point halftime comeback to win the title from Utah.
However, Smith suffered some tough near-misses and never returned to the Final Four at UK.
In 2007, Smith left for Minnesota and Kentucky replaced him with Billy Gillispie. Gillispie had just defeated Louisville in the NCAA Tournament at Texas A&M, and was viewed as a blue collar coach. He lasted only two seasons at Kentucky, seeming temperamentally unsuited for the fishbowl environment in Lexington. Kentucky was 0-1 in the NCAA Tournament in Gillispie's two years.
Calipari comes
In 2009, Kentucky hired John Calipari from Memphis. At the time, critics noted that while Calipari had taken two teams to the Final Four, both Final Four trips were ultimately vacated by the NCAA. Still, Calipari's first Kentucky team spent part of the season at No. 1 and reached the Elite Eight. John Wall also became Kentucky's first-ever No. 1 NBA draft pick.
Calipari took Kentucky to the Final Four in 2011 and then won the NCAA title in 2012. That team, with the top two picks in the upcoming NBA draft in Anthony Davis and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, lost two games all season. After a disappointing 2013 season, Calipari took a young team to the NCAA Finals in 2014 before a loss to UConn.
In 2015, Calipari fielded perhaps his best team ever, including Karl-Anthony Towns and Devin Booker, among a mass of future NBA players. Kentucky completed the regular season unbeaten and reached the Final Four before suffering an upset loss to Wisconsin in the national semifinals.
Calipari hasn't been back to the Final Four and now has just one NCAA Tournament win since 2019. Kentucky had never lost to a double-digit seed before a 2022 loss to No. 15 seed Saint Peter's. Now added to that list is a 2024 loss to No. 14 seed Oakland.
