No. 18 Kentucky was already one of the most disappointing teams in the country. Then it lost by 35 points in front of a mostly UK partisan crowd.
The dam broke on Friday for the Wildcats, who entered a game against No. 11 Gonzaga with a 5-3 record and exited with a 5-4 record. The final score: 94-59.
The game started badly and ended badly for Kentucky. Gonzaga began the game with a 19-2 run and was up 43-20 at halftime. As the Wildcats players began the trek to the locker room, the fans at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville showered them with boos.
With UK's campus much closer than Gonzaga's, the crowd was almost entirely Wildcats fans. And they made their voices heard.
Yeeshpic.twitter.com/QKkAOH8mLb
— Mike Rutherford (@CardChronicle)December 6, 2025
Kentucky getting booed off the court trailing 43-20 at halftimepic.twitter.com/KJYDzYTAiz
— Tyler Russell (@TylerJRuss)December 6, 2025
The second half was no better. Overall, Kentucky was 16-of-60 from the field (27%) and got outrebounded 43-31. Gonzaga, meanwhile, shot 36-of-63 (57%) and was 9-of-18 from 3-point range. Graham Ike led all players with 28 points and 10 rebounds in 30 minutes.
After the game, Kentucky head coach Mark Pope said his team deserved the boos, with himself the most deserving:
"We've diminished into a bad spot right now and we have to dig ourselves out of it. It's going to be an internal group thing and we feel the responsibility we have to this university and this fan base. All the boos we heard tonight were incredibly well-deserved, mostly from me. We have to fix it."
Kentucky began the season ranked No. 9 in the country after going 24-12 in Pope's first season in charge. To bolster last year's group, the Wildcats spent big on a transfer class that included Arizona State's Jayden Quaintance, Pitt's Jaland Lowe, Florida's Denzel Aberdeen and Alabama's Mouhamed Dioubate.The reported price tag for the roster: $22 million.
It seemed like a formidable group if Pope could get all the new talent on the same page, but the team has now lost all four of its games against ranked opponents. The Louisville loss was embarrassing. The Michigan State game was out of reach the entire second half. The UNC loss was a gut punch.
And now, a 35-point loss. Don't expect them to ranked come Monday.
To be fair, health has not been on Kentucky's side so far. Quaintance, a lottery pick-level talent, is still recovering from a torn ACL and Dioubate missed his fourth straight game due to a sprained ankle. Lowe returned from a shoulder injury Friday and posted zero points on 0-of-5 shooting from the bench.
Still, Kentucky teams, even short-handed ones, aren't supposed to lose by 30-plus. The program is a blue blood, with immense resources and expectations to match. Pope seems well aware of that, and his program will get two more shots against ranked opponents this month — home against No. 22 Indiana and a matchup against No. 23 St. John's in Atlanta — before conference play starts in the new year.
