The Wildcats’ 27-point blowout of Mizzou sums up their great history with the Tigers

When Rutgers joined the Big Ten in 2014, they immediately became a men’s basketball punching bag for the entire league and a free win or two every year. They’ve improved since then, but Missouri has always been a gimme for the Kentucky Wildcats every year except when the ‘Cats are really struggling (like last year).

Missouri is the only team in the SEC that has yet to win in Rupp Arena. Kentucky improved to 14-2 all time against the Tigers Wednesday night, with the only losses being on the road last year with an awful team and in 2017 with a somewhat mediocre team. Most of the wins have been easy blowouts, and a big help for Kentucky when they’re trying to win the league and need some gimme games. In most power conferences there are no gimme games, and they’re right, but for a quality Kentucky team most years Georgia, Mississippi State, Vanderbilt, and Missouri are more often than not 20-point blowouts.

It’s also quite interesting that UK has never lost at home to Missouri, because they have quite a few other home court streaks against their conference foes as well. Auburn hasn’t won in Lexington since 1988, Ole Miss hasn’t since 1998, and Vanderbilt since 2007. The Auburn streak is probably the most impressive, and perhaps this Mizzou streak will last awhile and compare with the Auburn one. The Wildcats are fortunate that they eked out the 82-80 home win over Auburn last year when they were horrible, because that would’ve ruined the streak.

Another big streak in UK’s history, though no longer an active one, is when they beat Ole Miss 41 times in a row from 1929-1996. That is a mind-boggling stat that amazes me. In a game like basketball, unless you are John Wooden’s UCLA or the Kentucky Wildcats, beating the same conference foe 40+ times in a row through all the up and down years is so difficult to do that honestly I don’t know if we’ll ever see it happen again for any team. I guess dominance like this is another part of why UK is the greatest tradition in the history of college basketball.

Go ‘Cats!