Some leftovers from UK’s impressive exhibition game victory over Purdue 78-65 Friday night and other stuff…
• Former Auburn coach Bruce Pearl says Kentucky will be better than last season when the Cats advanced to NCAA Sweet Sixteen. Wrote Pearl on his X (formerly Twitter) post Saturday morning, “Kentucky and Mark Pope will make the biggest jump from last season to this season in CBB! Who else do you think makes a big move? I’m looking for sleepers! A couple of mine are @UConnMBB and @ncstatehoops (referring to UConn and NC State).” Pearl, who recently retired, will be working as a TV analyst for CBS and TNT this winter.
• According to the preseason AP Top 25, No. 9 Kentucky was underrated when they beat Purdue by 13 points and No. 1 Purdue was overrated as the Boilermakers couldn’t shoot (38.6 percent) and rebound (30 compared to UK’s 42). “More than anything, I just thought they (the Wildcats) embraced the physicality of the game,” said Purdue coach Matt Painter.
Jamie H. Vaught, a longtime sports columnist in Kentucky, is the author of seven books about UK basketball, including soon-to-be-published “Unforgettable Journey with the Cats: Inside Kentucky Hoops Madness.” Now a retired college professor who taught at Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College in Middlesboro, he is the editor and founder of KySportsStyle.com Magazine.• Speaking of preseason polls, they are pretty much meaningless today due to significant influx of transfers in college athletics. Coaches like Rick Pitino of St. John’s and Danny Hurley of UConn agree. Pitino said he doesn’t even know the names of the players from other schools because they kept moving around.
At the Big East Conference Media Day festivities, Pitino, now 73, was asked about how he approaches coaching today. “It’s different. Look, I’m not the same type of coach I was at Kentucky,” said Pitino. “I was a big brother figure at Kentucky. I was a father figure at Louisville. Now I’m a grandfather figure at St. John’s. So, you evolve, you change as the climate changes as well. We’re dealing with professional athletes now, so you treat them professionally.”
• Sophomore guard Trent Noah made his first start as a Wildcat even though it was an exhibition matchup. “It’s every little boy’s dream in Kentucky growing up,” said Noah, a Harlan County native who had 10 points, including 2 of 4 three-pointers, in 24 minutes. “It really was super surreal. But there is nothing like (Big Blue Nation) either. You come in, in October, and play in front of a sold-out crowd with Rupp Arena jumping — it is incredible. There is nothing like the fans that we have here. It is a real honor to be able to play for the state of Kentucky.”
• Freshman guard Jasper Johnson led the Cats with 16 points. A five-star prospect, Johnson is a third generation Wildcat as his father, Dennis, and uncle, Derrick, both played football at UK.
• The defensive-minded Wildcats are very deep this season as they had 10 players who saw action in at least 15 minutes against Purdue. UK also played without two probable starters Jaland Lowe, a junior transfer from Pittsburgh, and 6-foot-10 defensive specialist Jayden Quaintance, a sophomore from Arizona State. They were out with injuries.
“This feels like my 1996 team in terms of point distribution,” said UK coach Mark Pope, a member of UK’s 1996 national championship team. “Can you do that in 25-26? Can we actually pull it off where we have guys that care so much about each other and so much about Kentucky that they are willing to do this? We are going to see. If we can do it, it’s a fun way to play, man, it’s pretty special.”
• Sports Illustrated has a basketball preview for its November edition. In the 2026 NBA Draft, the magazine has projected Quaintance as the No. 6 pick. Tennessee’s 6-foot-9 Nate Ament is projected at No. 4.
• Sports Illustrated has Kentucky women at No. 18 in its preseason poll, ranking behind six SEC teams with South Carolina, not surprisingly, at No. 1.
• Speaking of Painter, he is currently ranked No. 4 on the Big Ten’s all-time list for career wins with 471, trailing only Tom Izzo (737), Bob Knight (662) and Gene Keady (512). Painter, who also coached one year at Southern Illinois, has 496 career victories. With four more victories, Painter will become the seventh-fastest active coach to reach 500 wins, joining the likes of Mark Few, John Calipari, Pitino, among others. He is also the ninth-longest tenured head coach at one school in the nation.
Painter once was a hard-nosed guard at Purdue during the early 1990s.
• On Thursday, the Wildcats will host Georgetown of the Big East Conference at Rupp Arena. The 7 p.m. ET contest will be shown on SEC Network+. In a preseason coaches poll, Georgetown was picked to finish at No. 6 (behind No. 1 St. John’s) in the 11-team Big East Conference. Coming off their 18-win season in 2024-25, the Hoyas have a couple of standouts – KJ Lewis and Malik Mack – who were chosen to preseason All-Big East teams.