It's about time for Mark Pope to run things back for a third time in Lexington. Kentucky Basketball's non-conference schedule is now nearly set, lighting the runway for the 2026-27 Wildcats' early season competition; the sort that usually comes back to make a difference in March.
There are a string of big games in the mix (even if Dick Vitale doesn't think so), with the likes of Kansas, North Carolina, and Louisville leading the charge. Yet, we've still got one matchup yet to be announced. That's where I'll attempt to come in.
From the outside looking in and with absolutely no insider information at all, I'm going to take a wild guess and say that somehow, some way, Kentucky adds the Wisconsin Badgers to their current slate. This is mostly a shot in the dark, but I do have a few reasons to suspect truth in the possibility.
The main one being Kentucky's somewhat scattered history of adding a squad of this caliber out of a Power 5 conference that isn't the ACC (due to the annual SEC vs. ACC contests).
The Scheduling History is There
Not only did Kentucky play Purdue in the preseason last fall, but the Wildcats were pitted against Michigan in a one-off non-conference game as recently as 2022. The real big blue won that matchup, 73-69.
In 2016, the then-fifth-ranked Cats plucked the Arizona State Sun Devils for a similar matchup, running away with a 115-69 victory on the back of a 23-point performance from Malik Monk. It seems like the time for another one of these games could be coming, and in that case, Wisconsin makes sense.
Not only do the Wildcats and Badgers have a built-in NCAA Tournament history, the likes of which is entrenched into either program's identity. Interestingly enough, though, the men's basketball teams have never met in the regular season.
Their 1-1 tally sits alone in back-to-back Final Four brawls, in 2014 and 2015. This red and blue rivalry may not be as grand as the one we all know and love (and sometimes hate), but it's certainly overdue for a tiebreaker.
Overdue for a Tiebreaker
Despite the four-seeded Badgers suffering a first-round upset to High Point in the NCAA Tournament this past season, head coach Greg Gard has gradually forced his Badgers back into relevancy. In an already stacked Big Ten conference, Wisconsin has held their own as a score-at-will, run em' out of the gym sort of bunch.
Last season, the Badgers even secured a signature win on the road against a Michigan team that would go on to win the national title.
The proximity makes sense, too; set this thing on a neutral floor and watch fans from either side rush to revisit a decade-old rivalry that people still talk about constantly. It'd be another chance for Kentucky and Coach Pope to grab a big win early and, overall, the potential duel fits into the Cats' wider schedule as it stands already.
Although, again, this is just my slightly hopeful guess. Take it with a big blue grain of salt.
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