Kentucky basketball coach Mark Pope talks to the media after the Wildcats’ 78-65 loss to Tennessee in the NCAA Tournament on March 28, 2025, in Indianapolis.
The Kentucky men’s basketball schedule for the 2025-26 season is going to be difficult.
Things won’t be easy for the Wildcats in the preseason either.
The latest high-profile addition to UK’s slate for Mark Pope’s second year in charge of the program was confirmed Friday morning, but it won’t be a regular-season matchup.
Pope’s Wildcats will instead play the Purdue Boilermakers in an exhibition game in Rupp Arena on Oct. 24.
While this one won’t count for the regular-season standings, it’s shaping up to be a battle of two teams with realistic NCAA Tournament championship hopes.
Purdue is No. 3 nationally in the early college basketball rankings from CBS Sports, which has Kentucky at No. 11 in the country at this early stage in the offseason.
The Boilermakers, going into their 21st season under head coach Matt Painter, will be led again by veteran point guard Braden Smith, who will be the only AP first-team All-American returning to college basketball for the 2025-26 campaign.
Smith, who was the subject of transfer rumors this spring — and even linked to Kentucky as a possible portal pickup — announced last month that he would return to Purdue for his senior year. He averaged 15.8 points, 4.5 rebounds and 8.7 assists per game this past season.
Painter will also return Trey Kaufman-Renn, who led the Boilermakers with 20.1 points and 6.5 rebounds per game last season, as well as Fletcher Loyer, Daniel Jacobsen and C.J. Cox, who were third, fourth and fifth, respectively, on the Purdue scoring list in 2024-25.
The Boilermakers finished last season with a 24-12 record, nearly upsetting Houston in the Sweet 16 round of the NCAA Tournament. They advanced to the NCAA title game the previous season.
An early attempt at bracketology projections — posted by ESPN’s Joe Lunardi this week — listed Purdue as the No. 1 overall seed for the 2026 NCAA Tournament.
A change to NCAA rules that was approved earlier this year now allows teams to schedule Division I opponents for regular exhibition games. In previous years, a matchup like this one would have necessitated a special waiver from the NCAA and included a provision that all game proceeds be donated to charity.
Kentucky’s other exhibition game for the 2025-26 season has not yet been made official.
Braden Smith was a first-team All-America point guard for the Purdue Boilermakers during the 2024-25 season.
Kentucky’s 2025-26 basketball schedule
There will also be plenty of marquee opponents for the Wildcats once the real games begin.
UK’s 2025-26 schedule is still in the process of coming together, but several high-major foes are already on the slate. The first major game of the season is expected to be the annual Champions Classic matchup on Nov. 18, when UK will face Michigan State in Madison Square Garden in New York.
The Spartans are No. 14 in the early CBS Sports rankings.
Kentucky will also have a game against Gonzaga — No. 24 in those rankings — on Dec. 5 in Nashville, as well as a road game against Louisville in the Yum Center. The date for that rivalry matchup has not yet been determined, and CBS has the Cardinals at No. 13 in the country.
The UK-Indiana rivalry is also set to resume this year, with the Hoosiers coming to Rupp Arena on Dec. 13.
The following week will bring perhaps the Cats’ toughest test of the season. On Thursday, it was announced that Kentucky will play St. John’s on Dec. 20 in Atlanta as part of a revamped CBS Sports Classic lineup. That game will feature Pope coaching against Rick Pitino, who led UK to the 1996 national championship before later leading Louisville’s program for 16 years. Pope was a captain on that 1996 title team.
St. John’s is ranked No. 2 on the early list from CBS Sports.
And the Wildcats will also be part of the ACC/SEC Challenge for the third consecutive year, likely to end up with a marquee opponent in that showcase. Though the matchups and locations for that event have not yet been announced, UK is expected to get hosting rights in Rupp Arena after traveling to Clemson last season.
With no games against Duke or North Carolina elsewhere on the schedule, the ACC/SEC Challenge organizers could pit one of those blue-bloods against the Wildcats.
Kentucky is also sure to face a difficult, 18-game schedule in the SEC, which put a record 14 teams in the NCAA Tournament this year. UK had the third-toughest schedule in the country in Pope’s first season, according to the KenPom ratings.
Leave a Reply