Kentucky players brought home "BEAT KENTUCKY!" newspaper from Starkville: 'They were wrong.'

Mississippi State didn’t break out a “t-shirt” night when Kentucky came to visit Starkville over the weekend, but the program’s athletic staff members found other ways to highlight how big of an opportunity this would be for the Bulldogs. In hindsight, the move backfired a bit.

Newspapers with a headline that read “BEAT KENTUCKY!” were placed throughout Humphrey Coliseum in anticipation of an upset over the Wildcats. After the dust settled and Kentucky walked away with a thrilling 95-90 win, it didn’t take some of the players very long to have fun with the newspapers. Ansley Almonor, one of the heroes from Kentucky’s win, posted a picture of himself reading the paper on his Instagram Story soon after the win.

For someone like Almonor, who spent the last three seasons playing at Fairleigh Dickinson, he’s had to learn rather quickly just how much contempt opposing fan bases, particularly schools from the SEC, have for Kentucky men’s basketball.

“That’s why you come to Kentucky,” Almonor said on Monday. “You go to other places, we’re their biggest game of the year. So it’s just fun to see these crowds want us to lose so bad, had newspapers and a whole bunch of gimmicks out there. Just trying to beat us. It’s been fun so far. We loved it. We love the challenge and it’s building us to be a great team when it really matters in March.”

Ansley Almonor after Kentucky’s win at Mississippi State 😂 pic.twitter.com/KZzNSFCI7J

— KSR (@KSRonX) January 12, 2025

To Mississippi State’s credit, their fans showed out for the Top 15 showdown. A sold-out crowd at The Hump was buzzing hours before tipoff and didn’t stop until the closing seconds when Kentucky finally pulled away for good. The Bulldogs were viewed as the favorites by both the bettors and computers, so a handful of UK players kept the newspapers as a reminder — a small trophy, if you will.

“They set them up in the student section around the whole stadium,” Almonor said of the paper, adding that he brought a few of them in his room in Lexington. “When we went the night before (for shootaround), we saw them. And we were like, that’s crazy. We’re just gonna take a whole bunch of these.”

“That was funny,” Freshman guard Travis Perry added. “Whenever we got to the gym the night before after our flight for shootaround, we saw a bunch of them there and we obviously thought it was funny. Anytime Kentucky comes to town, there’s gonna be something like that there. So we picked up a few whenever we were heading out, put them in our bags, just kinda had them. They were out in the locker room (after the win) for sure. I got a few. My mom and dad and my little brother made the trip down, so I gave some to them.”

It was just another Super Bowl type of night for Kentucky. It wasn’t the first of the season and it certainly won’t be the last. Every time an opposing team sells out its arena or gives out free gear is just another opportunity for Kentucky to build and prepare ahead of the postseason. The Wildcats learned a lot about themselves from the win in Starkville, which was just a few days removed from a road loss to Georgia.

The newspaper, on the other hand, didn’t tell them much.

“I learned that they were wrong,” Almonor said with a grin.

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