A pair of blue bloods with a combined 15 national titles will square off for the first time in almost a decade when Indiana travels to Kentucky on Saturday night in Lexington, Ky.
Both programs are looking to re-establish themselves as each fell out of the Associated Press Top 25 poll this week.
The Hoosiers (8-2) opened December with losses to Minnesota and then-No. 6 Louisville before rolling past Penn State 113-72 on Tuesday. In the victory over the Nittany Lions, Indiana’s Lamar Wilkerson erupted for a career-high 44 points, highlighted by a program-record 10 3-pointers.
“Coach told me today was going to be the day that I got hot because I’ve been having a rough couple of games,” Wilkerson said. “He fed me the ball. I saw one, two, three go in, then after that they just found the hot hand. They kept feeding me. The shots kept going in.”
Behind Wilkerson’s hot hand, the Hoosiers shot a season-best from deep (17 of 31). That will be difficult to replicate against Kentucky, which has limited opponents to 29.7% from long range.
For the Wildcats (6-4), though, the focus is on finding their identity. They have been in a forgettable stretch that has seen their faithful boo them as well as former stars question their effort. They started the month with consecutive losses to then-No. 16 North Carolina and then-No. 11 Gonzaga before crushing North Carolina Central 103-67 on Tuesday.
After the NC Central game, Kentucky coach Mark Pope pointed to several areas that still need improvement.
“We just have a lot of growing that we have to do right now. And we’ll grow,” Pope said. “We have good guys. We have competitive guys. We don’t know really what it means to compete yet, which is terrifying, but we will. We’ll learn. We’re going to learn. We’re going to learn fast.”
This will be the 58th meeting between the storied programs, with Kentucky leading the series 32-25. Indiana won the last matchup, 73-67, to advance to the Sweet 16 during the 2016 NCAA Tournament in Des Moines, Iowa.
The last meeting at Rupp Arena was Dec. 11, 2010, an 81-62 win by the Wildcats.
