No. 19 Kentucky men’s basketball did the seemingly impossible late Tuesday night, marching into a neutral site and besting No. 6 Duke 77-72.
Not only did Head Coach Mark Pope’s Cats, a true Frankenstein’s monster of a team with transfers from all across the country, take down the No. 1 overall prospect in college basketball, Cooper Flagg, they also did so in their first ever game against a ranked opponent.
“I like our group,” Pope said. “If we had lost this game, I would still like our group. This group is special. These guys, nobody knew each other and they’ve been very intentional about getting to know each other. Three or four weeks into the summer I had guys doing incredibly gracious, generous acts of kindness for their teammates.”
While a monstrous matchup regardless of how one spins it, the win meant just that much more to Kentucky fans for the event it took place in: the State Farm Champions Classic.
The Wildcats have been part of the event since its inception in 2011 alongside Duke, Michigan State and Kansas. During the early years of the competition, UK thrived with Head Coach John Calipari, winning four of its first six games in the famed event.
As the Cats easily routed Michigan State 69-48 in 2016, few fans probably could have foreseen the downward spiral that UK would soon face in the event.
In fact, since that 21-point win inside Madison Square Garden in 2016, Kentucky would go on to win just one more Champions Classic (2019) under Calipari, falling to a staggering 1-6 in its next seven appearances to drop its all-time record to 5-8.
This trend included an embarrassing 118-84 thrashing — a 34-point differential — loss to the Zion Williamson-led Blue Devils despite Kentucky entering the game No. 2 in the country, a deflating double overtime defeat against an okay 2022 Michigan State squad that fell on the coaching shoulders of Calipari and, most recently, a size mismatch against the Kansas Jayhawks inside the United Center last season.
As the losses piled up in the event, with the most recent having been the fourth straight, Kentucky fans began to grow restless and frustrated as the results, in combination with a lack of NCAA Tournament success, seemed to indicate UK and Calipari were much closer to being a “has-been” than a legitimate contender every year, a criticism often levied against Michigan State by fans calling for its removal from the competition.
That would all change in 2024 at the very first time of asking for Pope.
Marching out a starting lineup that didn’t include a single returning Kentucky player and two non power-six transfers, Pope’s Cats got paired with a Duke team, led by Head Coach Jon Scheyer, that had been at the epicenter of the college basketball media storm with extremely high ambitions and a loaded squad.
Even further than that, going into the halftime break it seemed as if the most likely outcome was going to be the real one as it was all Kentucky could do to be within single digits of the Blue Devils after a sloppy first half that saw two knee-capping scoring droughts.
From there, however, things changed.
UK came out of the halftime break ready, punching the Blue Devils in the mouth with a 5-0 scoring run after, as Pope explained, the players themselves made adjustments and changes before he even reached them.
“What I was really proud of was guys went and sat in the locker room and all it was is constructive,” he said. “The guys do most of the fixing before I even get in the locker room.”
While Duke responded in turn, the pesky Wildcats, akin to a splinter in a paw, refused to go away, hanging around and, occasionally, chipping into the deficit point-by-point.
As the lead fluctuated from eight, to six, to four, to eight, back down to four, two… Kentucky suddenly found itself in a one-score game.
Duke would tighten up defensively and get a stop, perhaps even draining a bucket at the other end, but the Wildcat engine would start right back up again and, shockingly, with just under four minutes to play, UK tied the game off an and-one play by Andrew Carr.
From there, it one-upped its own feat, stealing the lead as Otega Oweh sunk a lay-up.
“(Pope) trusted me to make those type of plays,” Oweh said. “So, I trusted myself to make those type of plays. We did share a moment where he told me to just go be me.”
Flagg would give the Devils the lead for the final time with an and-one play of his own, but Carr put together yet another and-one play, regaining the lead for the final time.
As Kentucky, now fully in control with momentum on its side, tightened up defensively, Duke crumbled as a turnover by Flagg all but sealed the deal in the final minute of play.
Sure enough, when that final buzzer sounded, it was jubilation for Kentucky, which not only won its first game in the Champions Classic since 2019, but picked up its first win over Duke in nearly 10 years, dating back to the 2015 incarnation of the competition.
“An unbelievable game, it was really special for us,” Carr said. “Coach always just talks about turning into each other and the people that matter, the people in the locker room. The closer we get, it’s harder and harder to break us.”
With the biggest win of the season thus far under his belt, Pope and Co. will have a week to regroup before facing off with the Lipscomb Bison back home inside Rupp Arena on Tuesday, Nov. 19. Tipoff against Lipscomb is slated for 7 p.m. ET and will air live on the SEC Network+.
