Kentucky athletic director sends clear message on expectations for Kentucky basketball

If there’s two things Kentucky athletic director Mitch Barnhart loves, its championships and checkerboard, in that order. The shiniest toy in Barnhart’s athletic program hasn’t lived up to historical expectations over the last half-decade as Kentucky basketball hasn’t won an NCAA Tournament game since 2018-19, and he addressed this on the radio Monday night.

“We won the SEC championship three years ago, and then the COVID tournament hit and knocked us out, we didn’t have a chance to play it. We’d love to have seen that team continue on,” Barnhart said on the UK Healthcare John Calipari Show Monday evening. “But at the end of the day, we’re built for championships. That’s what this program is all about. It’s about winning SEC championships in the regular season, it’s about SEC titles in the tournament, it’s about championships in March and in early April. Deep, deep runs, that’s what we’re built for. We’re supposed to do those things and we fell short of that this year.”

It wasn’t just last year — Barnhart failed to mention the 9-16 2020-21 season where Kentucky didn’t qualify for the NCAA Tournament. If Kentucky wins an NCAA Tournament game in 2023, it’ll be over four years since Kentucky’s last first round tournament win occurred. Calipari would have been paid nearly $33 million by UK throughout that period.

Despite the disappointment over the last few seasons, Big Blue Nation turns out in droves, traveling from New York to Las Vegas and everywhere in between this past season to see their beloved Wildcats shine against the nation’s best. With 10 years removed from UK’s eighth championship, BBN is itching for number nine more than ever right now.

“To our fans that have been unbelievable — we had an incredible following in Tampa and an incredible following in Indianapolis,” Barnhart said. “I had literally hundreds of people walk up and say, ‘I bought these tickets so long go hoping we’d be here.’ And we disappointed. Our responsibility is to make those deep runs and create those great memories in a good way, in a positive way for our program and our fan base, to hang banners in Rupp Arena. We all want that.”

Barnhart made it clear what the expectations are for Kentucky basketball going forward — win a national championship or anything else is a disappointment.

“If anybody knows anything about our program as a whole, that’s what we are designed to do,” Barnhart said. “We have built the foundational pieces of Kentucky Athletics and specifically Kentucky basketball to, layer upon layer, give us an opportunity to celebrate championship-level performance. So we need to return to that. Our fans deserve that.

“I am deeply disappointed as they are we didn’t have our chance to experience that this year in Indianapolis, Philadelphia, New Orleans.”