Kentucky announces dates for preseason schedule, pair of exhibition matchups
Big Blue Nation now knows when the unofficial and on-court debuts will be for Kentucky under Mark Pope.
Per a release on Friday, the Wildcats will play a pair of exhibitions in late October as part of their preseason. They will start with a game against Kentucky Wesleyan on October 23rd before playing Minnesota State (Mankato) a week later on October 29th. No times or designations are yet set for either matchup.
These will come after Big Blue Madness and the Blue-White Game for Kentucky. BBM will get the year started for both the men’s and women’s teams, each of which have new head coaches, inside Rupp Arena on October 11th. Then, a week after that on October 18th, the two team will play their public preseason scrimmages inside of Memorial Coliseum on campus. Further details are to come regarding both events involving each program.
Kentucky is on a 31-game winning streak in exhibitions with an all-time record of 152-12.
Among those 164 exhibitions include their two previous against the Kentucky Wesleyan Panthers. They will come from Owensboro, around three hours west of Lexington, for a third-ever preseason meeting with UK. This comes after the two met for 11 games as regular-season opponents back in the early 1900s.
As for Minnesota State, Kentucky has never competed against the Mavericks before. The Division II program has not played against a Division I opponent in four seasons.
Each game will represent the Wildcats first-look at not only Pope on the sidelines but their all-new roster. They, along with the preseason events, will all be in preparation of Kentucky’s first game against Wright State on November 4th.
Kentucky announces non-conference schedule for 2024-25
Kentucky is preparing for their first season under Mark Pope. That includes the very start of it with a non-conference schedule that the program has now announced.
The Wildcats shared the 13-game portion of their schedule on Thursday. It includes some known events that they were set to take part in anyways along with some standalone matchups and events that are officially on the slate.
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Again, several of these dates had been out for some amount of time now. They had already annouced games versus Duke in the Champion’s Classic, Clemson in the SEC-ACC Challenge, Gonzaga, Louisville, and Ohio State in the CBS Sports Classic, although some dates were only per reports. Lipscomb and Western Kentucky had also been parts of reports.
However, some of these matchups are coming out for the first time upon this post. For example, we now know the official debut for Pope as it will come against Wright State on November 4th. They’ll then play Bucknell before heading to Atlanta to face the Blue Devils.
The game with Jackson State will fit in alongside Lipscomb and WKU in what’s being titled as the BBN Invitational.
Finally, Kentucky will wrap up the non-conference schedule in December with games with Colgate and then Brown on New Year’s Eve. Those will mix in with their events against Gonzaga and Ohio State along with the rivalry game against Louisville.
From there, Kentucky will play a conference schedule of 18 games in the SEC. They will play Tennessee, Alabama, and Vanderbilt both home and away. Their home schedule will most notably include Arkansas along with Auburn, Florida, LSU, South Carolina, and Texas A&M. Then, on the road, they will go to Georgia, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas.