LEXINGTON, Ky. — Kentucky coach John Calipari said Wednesday morning that the Wildcats will renew their basketball series with Indiana, starting with the 2025-26 season.
“We’ve agreed in principle that we’ll be playing them,” Calipari said at the Southeastern Conference media day.
The UK coach added that the first game in the renewed series will take place during the 2025-26 season and said the talks have now reached the administrative level. “So all the details will be worked out.”
The biggest question now is where those games will be played.
That’s been the sticking point that has led to stalled talks in the past, with Indiana wanting at least some of the games on home courts and Kentucky wishing to play all games at neutral sites.
Calipari did not confirm Wednesday where the games will take place — that’s part of the talks that will happen at “the administrative level” — but he didn’t explicitly rule out returning the series to home courts. He also talked about how it will be beneficial for UK’s season ticket holders to know what games they’re going to get at home well ahead of time, noting that Gonzaga and Michigan are already on the schedule for trips to Rupp Arena next season, with Louisville and a marquee Big 12 opponent expected to be on the 2024-25 home slate.
“I kind of like that we’re going out (into the future), so they’ll all know: ‘Here are the games we’re playing.’ … This will put us out five or six years. You’ll know what it is.”
The most recent regular-season game in the series came in 2011, when Christian Watford hit a buzzer-beater to hand Kentucky its first loss of the season. A wild scene followed that shot, with Hoosiers fans rushing the Assembly Hall court to celebrate the victory.
Kentucky and Indiana had played each other in the regular season in 43 consecutive seasons — starting with the 1969-70 campaign — before the series was discontinued a few months after that 2011 game. The matchup was played primarily on home courts before transitioning to a neutral-site series — alternating between Louisville and Indianapolis over a 15-year period — starting with the 1991-92 season.
UK and IU returned to playing on their home courts in 2006, with each program getting three home games before the end of the series.
Over the course of those 43 straight regular-season meetings, the UK-IU game was played 13 times in Bloomington, 10 times in Lexington, 10 times in Indianapolis and 10 times in Louisville.
The Cats and Hoosiers have played each other twice in the NCAA Tournament since their final regular-season matchup.
UK avenged its 2011 loss to IU during that postseason, defeating the Hoosiers, 102-90, in the 2012 regional semifinals en route to a national championship. Four years later, Indiana eliminated Kentucky with a 73-67 victory in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
Before Indiana defeated UK in 2011, the Wildcats had won 14 of the previous 17 games in the rivalry.
Earlier this year, IU Coach Mike Woodson expressed interest in renewing the series and implied that he would be OK with it returning to a neutral-court matchup, noting that he’d spoken to Calipari about the idea.
“I’m gonna stay on his heels about trying to get the Kentucky-Indiana series back on the table,” he said. “Over the years that was a hell of a game. It might not be Bloomington-Lexington. However we’ve got to get it done, I’ll take it.”
Woodson is entering his second year as head coach of the Hoosiers, who went 21-14 last season and earned a spot in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2016. IU has not advanced past the Sweet Sixteen since making the national championship game in 2002. The program’s last national title came 35 years ago, when Bob Knight was head coach.
Indiana is ranked No. 13 in the AP preseason Top 25 poll, which was released this week. That is the Hoosiers’ first appearance in the AP poll since January 2019 and their highest preseason ranking since 2016.
Kentucky is No. 4 in the preseason rankings.
