Kentucky-Louisville Men’s Hoops Rivalry Adds Spicy New Chapter

Two new coaches—Wildcats’ Mark Pope and Cardinals’ Pat Kelsey—restored the value of the matchup, giving the state and sport something to anticipate again.

Kentucky Wildcats guard Otega Oweh dunks the ball against the Louisville Cardinals at Rupp Arena. / Jordan Prather-Imagn Images

With five minutes and seven seconds remaining in a very good game between the Louisville Cardinals and Kentucky Wildcats, a disappointingly dormant rivalry erupted back to life in Rupp Arena.

Louisville guard Reyne Smith dove on the floor for a loose ball in front of the Cardinals’ bench. Kentucky big man Brandon Garrison bent down and attempted to yank the ball away, but in the process fouled Smith. Tempers flared briefly—did Garrison attempt to drop a foot on Smith’s chest?—and Garrison was pushed by a scrum of players into the Louisville bench, a white jersey surrounded by red. Wildcats guard Lamont Butler joined the hubbub, and coach Mark Pope sprinted over to make sure nothing escalated. So did a handful of sheriffs, who quickly appeared on the court.

“That was probably the most fun part of the game, right?” Pope quipped afterward.

That moment—and the play of both teams before and after the little dustup—was exactly what the most heated rivalry in men’s college basketball needed. Some juice. Some edge. Some competitive heat. Some pride. Nothing stupid and nothing violent, but a clear indication that the Cards and Cats are going to resume going at each other without backing down.

Kentucky won the game, 93–85. That was the expected outcome, as the Cats improved to 10–1—better than expected for a completely new roster. But shorthanded Louisville (6–5), which has lost two key players for the season to injury, battled for 40 minutes against its hated rival. That’s more than the Cardinals have done in this game in years.

Here’s how it went during the dismal, disastrous two years with Kenny Payne as coach: Louisville trailed Kentucky 18–2 out of the gate in 2022 at Rupp; and Louisville trailed by 17 at halftime last year at home. They were early knockouts, after which Wildcats coach John Calipari insulted everyone’s intelligence by trying to prop up his former assistant, Payne, as a capable head coach. Payne was fired with an embarrassing 12–52 record after dragging the program to the bottom.

Now Louisville has a real coach in Pat Kelsey. And Kentucky has a real coach who knows what it means to play in this rivalry, having gone 1–1 against Louisville while playing for Rick Pitino during the 1994–95 and ’95–96 seasons. The memories of the 88–86 loss in Freedom Hall came flooding back to Pope on Friday night.

“The bus ride home from Louisville—I was in a full-on, teary-eyed sweat last night,” Pope said postgame. “I had blocked it out of my head and it all came rushing back. You get locked in a bus with Coach P for an hour and a half after a two-point loss against Louisville? Whew. I wouldn’t wish that on any of you. I bet only half you guys would come out alive.”

In an era of constant player movement, both these teams are stocked with first-year players who hail from all over the place and had no firsthand knowledge of what Kentucky vs. Louisville means, and what it has meant for 40 years. To help them understand, Pope had 15 former UK players write letters to the 15 current players to tell them their memories of playing Louisville. It was an inspired teaching moment.

“Those letters, they’re really, really special,” Pope said. “Some time five, 10, 15, 20 years from now, our guys will be writing letters to the next generation of players.”

Duke vs. North Carolina draws brighter lights and has probably produced more great games, but this is the basketball version of the Iron Bowl football rivalry between the Auburn Tigers and Alabama Crimson Tide. In a state without major pro sports, this is an all-consuming competition between fan bases that can become a veritable culture war.

There was, memorably, a fight at a dialysis clinic between a Louisville fan and a Kentucky fan before the teams met in the 2012 Final Four. But every day of the year there are fewer skirmishes happening—in offices, on school buses, in bars, anywhere.

That’s especially true in the battleground city of Louisville, where the majority of the town wears red and black but a large minority wears blue and white. Get out further into the state and it’s almost all blue. Even after taking over a depressed program that had some of the spirit beaten out of it, Kelsey has quickly picked up on the dynamic.

“This is a great, great rivalry,” Kelsey said. “Not just in collegiate basketball, but it’s one of the really cool rivalries in all of American sports. We’ve got to do our part and win some to continue to make it a rivalry. It’s hard to truly describe—especially in our city of Louisville—how much this rivalry means. [The fans] reminded me early and often, every single day. Every time I get gas, every time I get something to eat in the community, ‘Hey Coach, how’s it going? You going to beat Kentucky this year?’ So I get it, I get it.

“When I walked out there today, I’m going to be honest with you, the pageantry of the Louisville-Kentucky rivalry hit me. I looked around and saw the atmosphere before the jump ball went up, and I took a minute to truly appreciate how special it was. But if it’s 365 days until we play again, I’m going to be reminded four million times when that game is coming up. And we’ll be looking forward to it.”

Kelsey will be thrilled that next year he won’t have to face fifth-year Kentucky guard Lamont Butler, who transferred in from San Diego State and was absolutely brilliant for the Wildcats. Butler had missed the last two games with an ankle injury and hadn’t even practiced much—then he went out and hung 33 on the Cardinals, making every shot from the field. Butler was 10-for-10, including 6-for-6 from three-point range, scoring a career-high 33 points.

“Lamont Butler just gave us one of the all-time great performances in the history of this super-special game,” Pope said, without exaggerating.

Butler had made only seven threes all season, out of 31 attempts. Then he lit up Louisville, opening the second half with three straight threes and scoring nine of Kentucky’s first 11 points after intermission.

“It was like [he was] touched by God,” Kelsey said of Butler’s shooting spree. “That ball was going in.”

But every time the Cats staggered the Cards with a run, Louisville answered. The Cardinals cut the deficit to three points twice in the second half on baskets by guard Chucky Hepburn (26 points, five assists). They cut it to five with just over three minutes remaining. But Kentucky never let it become truly nerve-wracking for the crowd of 21,093, which kept the heat on the visitors throughout.

“That’s the greatest atmosphere I’ve ever played in,” Louisville’s Terrence Edwards Jr. said.

That’s what this game should be like every year.