Kentucky Wildcats Basketball: 10 Worst Losses of the Last 20 Years

When you have the history of the Kentucky Wildcats basketball program, it's easy for fans to reminisce about the titles won and the great victories.  What Kentucky fan could ever forget the 1996 Wildcats run through the NCAAs as one of the most dominant teams of all time?  Who doesn't remember the title run two years later in 1998? 

And what Kentucky fan old enough to remember the 1978 season will ever forget the great Goose Givens lighting up Duke in the championship game?

However, as some fans often do, I tend to mostly think back on the games that Kentucky lost.  The titles are great of course, but I'm just a negative kind of guy and I'm always thinking back to the heartbreaking losses and the titles that could have been.

And when you make as many tournaments as Kentucky has and have had some of the great teams that they have, well, there are sure to be some upsets and tough tourney losses to choose from.  Yes, as a Kentucky fan I've seen some good times.  But I've also seen more than my fair share of bad.

And that's the focus here.  Over the last 20 years Kentucky has seen numerous upsets and blown chances that have torn the hearts out of the team and fans alike.  What are the worst losses?  Sit back, relax and prepare to find out.

Here are the 10 worst losses that Kentucky has suffered over the last two decades.  Some hurt because of how the game ended and some hurt because of what could have been if Kentucky had only won the games.  But they all hurt.

10. UNC in 1995 Elite Eight

Kentucky had an incredible team in 1995 and probably should have made the Final Four along with fellow SEC power and defending national champion Arkansas.  Their 1995 SEC title game was epic and one of the best college games I have ever seen.

Unfortunately, Kentucky forgot how to shoot in the 1995 East Regional Final against North Carolina and blew a golden opportunity for the Final Four and a shot at the championship. 

Kentucky shot an abysmal 7-of-36 from the three-point line and shot just 28 percent overall from the field in losing to the Tar Heels 74-61.  While the game was also notable for an atrocious officiating decision that still defies belief, the reason Kentucky lost was because they simply got outplayed by a damn good team.

Still, this game hurt because that Kentucky team was maybe the best team in the country, as shown when most of that team came back to thrash the NCAA in 1996 en route to the championship.

9. Michigan in 1993 Final Four

As with the 1995 UNC game, the loss to Michigan in the 1993 Final Four was painful since it may have deprived Kentucky of the national title.  However, again as with the UNC game, it's tough to be too upset by the loss as Kentucky just lost to the better team on that day.

As with any game in the tournament, there were some very questionable calls made in this game.  But the game was fairly evenly called and both teams were allowed to play pretty physically.

If these teams had met 10 times, I would have liked Kentucky to have won six or seven of them.  Alas, they lost the one that mattered, 81-78 in overtime.

8. Marquette in 2003 Elite Eight

While the sting of this 83-69 loss has worn off quite a bit the past few years (especially after watching Mr. Wade blow up into one of the NBA's best players), it still has to make the list for two reasons:  timing and injury.

Taking place in the Elite Eight will make any loss hurt, and this one was no exception.  Kentucky entered the game as the nation's top team and had won 26 games in a row.  They were heavily favored going into this contest and even though the selection committee did them no favors (the top overall seed having to play Wisconsin and Marquette in Minneapolis?), nearly everyone in Kentucky was packing their bags for the Final Four.

However, Kentucky's best player and best perimeter defender, Keith Bogans, badly sprained his ankle in the Sweet 16 against Wisconsin and wasn't himself for the showdown with Wade.  And as it turned out, without Bogans, Kentucky had no chance to beat Marquette on this day.  Wade went on to record a triple-double and the season came to a screeching halt one step short of the Final Four.

7. Indiana 12/10/2005

When did the Tubby Smith era really begin to sour?  You could do a lot worse than to pick this game as the moment most of Big Blue Nation was ready to finally start "Scrubbing the Tub."

No, it wasn't in the NCAA tournament and it really had no national significance, but this game was just painful for Kentucky fans to have to suffer through.  Coming only one week after losing to an unranked North Carolina team at home, Kentucky laid an egg against the Hoosiers and were blown out 79-53.

Looking back on that game and the lineup Kentucky had, it shouldn't have been that ugly.  Yes, Kentucky was a bad team that year, but Indiana wasn't that much better.  This was a total collapse and a team that looked like it had quit on its coach.  And, let's be totally honest here—Kentucky wasn't that talented either.

There have been bigger blowouts in Kentucky history for sure (Vandy by 41).  But anytime you suffer your worst-ever loss to a rival that is coached by Mike Davis, that game has to make any list like this.

6. Kansas 01/07/2006

Seventy-three to 46.  Seventy-three to 46.  Only a few weeks after getting blown out against Indiana, Kentucky went to Kansas and got destroyed 73-46.

Did I mention that the 2005-2006 season was when most Kentucky fans finally began to realize that Tubby just wasn't getting the job done at Kentucky?  Well, it was.

Kentucky looked like a JV team this game and there wasn't a coaching change or anything else traumatic for a program to go through to excuse what we were seeing at this point in the Smith years.  Kentucky was just flat-out bad and was an embarrassing team to watch.  This game just finally clinched it for most.

5. UAB in 2004 Second Round

Kentucky had surprisingly entered the 2004 NCAA tournament on a tear and was one of the favorites going in.  But it was all fool's gold as the team was upset in the second round against UAB 76-75.

And as much as this has to be called an upset, the truth of the matter is looking back on the stats, it was a really even game and UAB was just the better team.  If anything, Kentucky got the favorable whistle.

And while Kentucky had a good season and got the most out of some lesser-talented players than what Kentucky was used to recruiting, their weakness of a lack of star power killed them in this game.  When they needed a go-to guy to get buckets, they didn't have anyone that could do it.  And when that happens in a close tournament game, you usually lose.

4. Gardner-Webb 11/07/2007

In Billy Gillispie's second game as the coach at Kentucky, the Wildcats suffered one of the most embarrassing losses in school history to Gardner-Webb.  And they didn't just lose; they got blown out 84-68.

Now, to be fair, Kentucky was a very weak team and a team in transition following the end of the Tubby Smith years.  Kentucky hadn't been Kentucky in a few years and recruiting had been pretty bad.  But still, Gardner-freaking-Webb!  Oy vey.

Teams like Kentucky should never lose to Gardner-Webb.  We probably all should have seen Billy Gillispie for what he was that night—in way over his head.  Unfortunately, things ended up getting worse.  But this game will always be the lowlight of his short Kentucky career and will go down in infamy in UK lore.

3. Duke in 1992 Elite Eight

Before we get started, I know the photo is from the 1998 game Kentucky won.  I just can't look at the shot, so here is Turner owning Wojo.  OK?

I hate the 1992 game to this day.  It makes me sick at my stomach thinking about it and I had to put it on the list because any game that ended the careers of the "Unforgettables" is a terrible loss.  And if the list was most heartbreaking losses, this would be a surefire No. 1.

But really, there isn't a lot to complain about from this game.  Kentucky played out of its mind and nearly upset the soon to be back-to-back champs with a bunch of local guys and one pretty good fellow from New York on the floor.

Still, losing 104-103 in perhaps the greatest college game ever still hurts incredibly bad.  I don't know if Kentucky would have gone on to win the title that year, but if they had it would have been one of the greatest stories in sports history.  And they were oh so close.

Damn it, I hate this game.

2. Arizona in 1997 Title Game

Shocking, isn't it?  A picture from the 1997 title game where Arizona is shooting free throws. 

Folks, that was the story of the game.  Free throws. 

Thanks refs.

The 1997 loss to Arizona will go down in Kentucky history as one of the most poorly officiated games ever.  There's really no other way to describe it other than to say Kentucky got hosed.  When it was all said and done, Arizona shot a whopping 41 free throws to 17 for Kentucky.  Forty-one to 17. 

Truly mind-boggling stuff.

And yet, Kentucky still sent the game to overtime and if Nazr Mohammed could have just hit one of his free throws (he was 0-of-6 in the game), then Kentucky would have won back-to-back titles.  So this was a really, really bad loss.  But since it was largely out of their control that they lost, I hate to penalize the players by calling this the worst loss of the last 20 years.

No, the next game was the worst.

1. UConn in 2011 Final Four

Why is the worst game of the last 20 years?  Because Kentucky played the worst possible game at the worst possible time and lost a guaranteed title in the process.  Yeah, the Arizona game in 1997 was in the title game itself, but Kentucky didn't play a truly terrible game.  And they got hosed by the refs so it largely wasn't their fault that they lost.

Kentucky just stunk up the joint against UConn.  Had they done just one thing well in that game, they win and go on to get their eighth national title.  Just one thing. 

Instead, here are some stats from the game: 21-of-62 from the field; 9-of-27 from three-point range; 4-of-12 as a team from the free-throw line; 0-of-5 from the free-throw line for Terrence Jones.

All of this and they still only lost 56-55.  And it wasn't like UConn played horribly offensively as well, they still shot 47 percent from the floor from the game and went 9-11 from the charity stripe.  So they did what they normally did on offense.

For all intents and purposes, Kentucky should have won this game by 10 points easily.  But they blew it.  And it's the only game on the list where Kentucky had this much at stake and just choked, plain and simple.  The losses to other great teams or players are understandable, but just choking away a title is terrible.

And that's why this was the worst loss of the last 20 years for the Kentucky Wildcats.

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