For some reason, Kentucky plays better away from Rupp Arena this season

For whatever reason, this season’s Kentucky men’s basketball team is playing better away from Rupp Arena.

The Wildcats are a respectable 11-4 when playing in Lexington during the 2023-24 campaign and boast a top-five offense in the country when defending home court. But 11-4 is *only* good enough for a winning percentage of 73.3. Three of those losses came in a row for the first time in the history of Rupp Arena. The other came against UNC-Wilmington. Not a typical season for this historic program.

John Calipari isn’t used to losing at Rupp Arena. It wasn’t until his fourth season as the head coach that he finally dropped a game at home. He has six undefeated seasons at home while at Kentucky. Including this season’s four losses, Calipari holds a 205-17 (92.3 percent) record at Rupp Arena. That means nearly 24 percent of all his home losses at UK have happened this season. There are myriad reasons why this might be the case (most of them educated guesses), but that’s not what we’re here to talk about.

What we will talk about is how Kentucky has been playing incredibly well on the road so far.

Kentucky is 7-3 away from Rupp Arena this season, including a 2-1 mark in neutral settings. According to BartTorvik, the Wildcats rank among the top 20 in the country in both offensive (14th; 117.3) AND defensive (20th; 95.9) adjusted efficiency when playing on the road. At home, UK ranks fifth in offense (123.6), but the defense (104.1) falls off a cliff to 163rd.

“We go on the road again. We’re pretty good. For some reason we’re better on the road than we are at home,” Calipari said after Kentucky beat No. 13 Auburn at Neville Arena on Saturday, 70-59. “I don’t have the answer. But we are, and it’s probably, maybe at home, we’re expected to win every game because we’ve won 90-something percent of our home games. So we’re expected (to win) and the crowds have been off the charts. So now you go on the road and you’ve got no chance of winning and now they play looser? Maybe? I don’t know. But we seem to be better on the road than we are at home.”

There might be something to Calipari’s theory. Particularly against Auburn, not many gave the Wildcats a chance to go into the Plains and take down a top-15 opponent. The pressure — with ESPN’s College Gameday hosting the primetime showdown — was mostly on the Tigers. But Kentucky still had to show up and play well. Beating up on a bad Vanderbilt team by 32 points helps inflate some of the road game numbers, too.

But Kentucky is taking on better competition away from Rupp Arena. It’s not crazy to think that a team with seven combined freshmen and sophomore rotational pieces does better when everyone in the gym expects you to lose. In that regard, the pressure is off of them. It probably is easier to be looser. But then again, the Big Blue Nation does travel well. Some of those “away” games — looking at you, Louisville and Vanderbilt — felt more like playing at Rupp. Kentucky beat the Cardinals and Commodores by a combined 51 points.

The reality is there’s no real statistical reason why Kentucky is playing better away from Rupp Arena this season, but it’s not a bad thing by any means. The postseason isn’t going to be played in Lexington. Kentucky has beaten North Carolina in Atlanta, Penn in Philadelphia, a now-ranked Florida team in Gainesville, and, of course, Auburn on Saturday. This group has proven it can win in any setting.

There’s no explanation as to the why, but at the very least, it provides some extra fuel to an argument for a deep run in March.