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Kentucky Wildcats Coach John Calipari

The University of Kentucky Wildcats are the winningest program in NCAA and SEC college basketball. North Carolina is a close second to the Cats for overall number of games won. The program came into existence prior to World War I when E.R. Sweetland was signed as the UK Director of Athletics and first basketball coach. The University of Kentucky is located in Lexington, Kentucky and plays their home basketball games in Rupp Arena.

Adolph Rupp put the program on the map with winning four national titles in 1948, 1949, 1951, and 1958. Coach Joe B. Hall led the cats to their first title in 20 years in 1978, followed by Rick Pitino in 1996 and Tubby Smith in 1998 for a total of seven national championships in the history of the Kentucky Wildcats basketball program. Kentucky’s overall program record is 1988-635-1 at the conclusion of the 2008-09 season and have led the nation in attendance 13 of the past 14 seasons through 2008-09 and have won 43 SEC Titles which is greater than the number won by the remainder of the conference.

Kentucky Wildcat Championship Teams

1948 – Coach Adolph Rupp would win his first of four national championships over Baylor, 58-42 with the Cats going 36-3 for the season. His team was nickname the “Fabulous Five” that season and they woudl also provide the core of the U.S. 1948 Olympic team who won the Gold Medal at the Summer Olympics held in London that year.

1949 – The Wildcats repeat with a 46-36 win over Oklahoma State, 46-36 going 32-2 for the season.

1951 – Kentucky would win their third title under Rupp defeating Kansas State, 68-68, and going 32-2 for the season.

1958 – Adolph Rupp would win his final national title defeating Seattle, 84-72 and going 23-6 for the year. Rupp nicknamed his team the “Fiddlin’ Five” because of their penchant for dawdling early in games that season.

1978 – Joe B. Hall led the Wildcats to their first national title in 20 years, defeating Duke 94-88 and going 30-2 for the season.

1996 – After suffering probation from the repurcussions of former Coach Eddie Sutton’s recruiting violations, the Rick Pitino led Cats defeated Syracues 76-67 to win their 6th national tile and would go 34-2 on the season and would also be the first SEC team in 40 years to go undefeated in regular season play. A total of 9 players from the 1996 team would go on to play in the NBA.

1998 – In Coach Tubby Smith’s first season as coach, the Wildcats rebounded from losing the NCAA championship game in 1997 and defeated Utah 78-69 to win the title and go 35-4 for the year.

Kentucky is currently coached by John Calipari who will be coaching in his first season at U.K. in the 2009-10 season.

Kentucky Wildcat Videos

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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 14th, 2009 at 8:07 pm and is filed under Kentucky Wildcats, sec. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.