What the World was like in 2008, the Last Time Louisville Won at Rupp Arena

You need more than a few fingers and toes to count how many years it’s been since Louisville beat Kentucky at Rupp Arena. To be more precise, when the Cards take the court on Saturday it will have been 6,188 days since Louisville’s last win over the Cats in Lexington.

It was January 5, 2008, and the Billy Gillispie era was off to a rocky start. Kentucky lost at home to Gardner-Webb in his second game as the UK head coach. The Cats had a four-game losing streak under their belt and entered the game against Louisville with just two wins in their previous seven.

Rick Pitino had one of his more talented teams. Terrence Williams and the infamous Andre McGee were two of the primary pieces who helped the Cards win the Big East regular season and conference tournament the following year to earn the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament. David Padgett was the senior anchoring the paint for the team that finished the 2008 season in the Elite Eight.

Ramel Bradley went off in the game at Rupp Arena, scoring 27 points to lead all scorers. Kentucky led at halftime, but after that things got ugly. Louisville started the second half on a 32-9 run with Juan Palacios tallying 17 points, six rebounds, and four assists. Jerry Smith had 17 and T-Will chipped in 17 in the 89-75 Louisville victory.

Gillispie lost to Louisville the following year. Since then Kentucky has won 13 of the last 16 meetings, including every one at Rupp. The world was a much different place the last time the Cards won on the Cats’ home court.

What the World was Like in 2008

The iPhone was six months old. Little did we know just how much Steve Jobs’ newest innovation would change the world.

The New England Patriots were undefeated. But not for much longer. We were a month away from watching David Tyree make the helmet catch in Super Bowl XLII. The Giants’ win got Jared Lorenzen a Super Bowl Ring.

T-Pain was on top of the music world. The autotune innovator had the top song of 2008 with Flo Rida in “Low.” When the weather got warm, it was the summer of Lil’ Wayne with the release of Tha Carter III.

The Avengers movies weren’t a thing. The comic book takeover of cinema did not start until Robert Downey Jr. suited up with the summer blockbuster Iron Man. It was a big year for the comics. The Dark Knight was the top movie of the year. Heath Ledger won a posthumous Academy Award for his role as the Joker. He was found dead in his home a few weeks after the Kentucky loss to Louisville.

The beginning of The Great Recession. The economy was just starting to take a downward swing the last time Louisville won at Rupp Arena. Dec. 2007 is generally considered the start of The Great Recession.

The first ‘Big Three’ in Boston. We are living in a world with NBA superteams and that all started when Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett teamed up with Paul Pierce and Rajon Rondo. The Celtics won the NBA Finals that summer, the first in Boston in 24 years.

Mark Spitz was America’s most decorated Olympian. That changed later that summer when Michael Phelps won his eighth gold medal in Beijing.

Mark Pope was still in med school. Pope was still pursuing a career as a neurosurgeon at Columbia Medical School, yet to take the leap toward being a coach.

The Office hits its peak. You have watched it on syndication and streaming but in 2008 the new episodes were firing on all cylinders. Jim and Pam were dating in season 4 when the show hit a speed bump thanks to the writers’ strike.

Every teenage girl was reading Twilight. It wasn’t as crazy as Harry Potter, but they were everywhere, even after the first movie came out in the fall of 2008.

I didn’t have my driver’s license. That didn’t happen until later that summer. A burned CD of Tha Carter III was played on repeat in my Toyota Corolla’s 5-disc changer.

This is what Kentucky Sports Radio looked like. The KSR Radio show was three years away from hitting the airwaves. Drew Franklin was still blogging on the Horace Grant Halftime Report, Tyler Thompson finished third in the “Who Wants to be a Blogger” contest, and BTI still sucked. (You can actually read Matt’s postgame write-up of the loss to Louisville on the Wayback Machine. He even gave Pitino credit, two years before the Karen Sypher extortion trial.)

It’s been a long, long time since Louisville beat Kentucky at Rupp Arena. Let’s keep it that way.