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Saturday was a fun one in Rupp Arena, as the Kentucky Wildcats crushed the Tennessee Volunteers in convincing fashion.
The Vols entered the game ranked No. 1 in the nation and riding a 19-game winning streak. However, many of those wins had come against lesser competition. In fact, the Vols had just one win over a top-25 team during that stretch — their 76-73 win over Gonzaga back on Dec. 9.
As you can imagine, those thoughts were running through the heads of many UK fans going into Saturday, especially once their Cats began running the Vols out of the building.
So of course, the ‘overrated’ chants came out near the end of the game, but John Calipari quickly shut that down:
Kentucky fans start chanting “Overrated” & Calipari shut that down quick. @Vol_Hoops @KentuckyMBB pic.twitter.com/hbyRRHM7HP
— Trey Wallace (@TreyWallace_) February 17, 2019
The good thing is the fans quickly stopped the chants as they saw angry Cal looking right at them.
It’s common for fans to do this, but this was a bad time to do so for a variety of reasons. The most obvious is doing so takes away from just how special of a night this was in Rupp as Kentucky beat a top-ranked team at home for the first time since 2003.
But perhaps the biggest reason Calipari shut it down was due to his strong friendship with Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes.
Oh, and let’s not forget that Kentucky plays at Knoxville in two weeks. UK fans don’t need to give the Vols any more motivation than they’ll already have in what will be Kentucky’s second-toughest game this season behind only Duke.