What's so fascinating about KU vs. UK
Assuming tonight’s game gets played—gulp!—I’m going to do a short post tomorrow in addition to this one, sizing up where KU stands after the Kentucky game. It’s not all going to be DaJuan Harris fan fiction, but I think it’s safe to expect at least some of that!
Anyway!
I suppose someday Kansas will catch Kentucky in the all-time win total. UK has 16 more wins currently, though KU has gained ground in recent years thanks to a few stronger regular seasons (comparatively speaking, of course). I know some people who care about this record, and some who don’t. I personally could take it or leave it, because all-times wins is just one measurement of program success, albeit a big and impressive one. (I want banners and Kentucky has more of those—I acknowledge this desire is interconnected with that fact). On the surface, it’s a cool, big record that will be heavily covered if KU ever happens to pass Kentucky.
I bring the record up as context, because I don’t think KU or UK exists within the sport like they do now without one another. Their fates are linked, and not just because the head coaches come out of the same coaching tree and they compete for the same players. When KU unveiled the newly-acquired original rules of basketball, drafted by Naismith (who is buried in Lawrence), the opponent was Kentucky. When Roy Williams announced his arrival onto the college hoops landscape in 1989 by stomping Rick Pitino 150-95, the opponent was Kentucky.
This is not a coincidence.
Like all good rivalries, KU vs UK looms bigger in the mind than it does on paper; after all, they’re not in the same conference or same region of the country, but they’re vying for the same control of college basketball’s narrative. When UK put in a residence hall that had more in common with a Bundesliga player residence than a college dorm, KU followed suit. Cuz recruiting, cuz money, sure. But that’s how it happened—this is not a coincidence.
Since Self has been at Kansas, Kentucky has always been on the schedule more often than not; since the 2011 title game, Kansas has played Kentucky seven times. Recruiting is changing rapidly as younger players assess their situations with increasingly clarity, but KU and UK will still be locked in recruiting wars no matter how the annual prospect rankings shake out.
At its core, KU vs UK is a clash of ideologies. Kentucky is the NBA factory, moving long, often stupendously skilled wings in and out of the program on an assembly line. Calipari is the program’s savvy salesperson, and an underrated coach. Say what you will about the Calipari’s signature slickness, he may be the sport’s only honest ambassador. Rupp Arena is a mellow setting compared to the AFHs and Cameron Indoors of the scene, but I get the sense that they like it that way. A midweek Kentucky game can feel like a NBA League Pass flier, and that has its advantages. The great Kentucky teams feel like an unstoppable combination of speed, skill and size.
Self cuts a more down-to-earth persona, and he mold his teams in that image. He’s more likable, less of a showman, more calculated in his approach toward the media. It suits the program and the setting, but at the end of the day, his on-court strategies and intensity come from the same place as Calipari’s. In a way, KU and Kentucky are two sides of the same coin, and not just because of the basically bottomless crossovers. Their rivalry is nostalgia, fully rendered; it’s something college basketball could use more of, even with the pitfalls of nostalgia.
The game is set to rapidly change in the next five years, and nowhere will that be more visible than in Lawrence and Lexington. Tonight they’ll play a probably meaningless game that was originally intended to be part of the Champions Classic preseason event—that they made sure to reschedule is, you guessed it, not a coincidence. But in the shadow of larger records, I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest that KU vs UK will be a bellwether for the viability of the sport at large.
Where do we go from here? It’s hard to say. But UK and KU’s game tonight will tell us something, I hope.