Kentucky coach John Calipari announced Tuesday that his Wildcats would play a home-and-home series with Gonzaga over the next two seasons.
Gonzaga will host Kentucky on Nov. 20 in Spokane, Wash. Then the Bulldogs will play a game at Rupp Arena in Lexington, Ky., in 2023.
The series pits one of college basketball’s classic blue bloods with one of the most dominant programs of recent times.
Calipari led Kentucky to a national title in 2012, the school’s eighth in men’s basketball. Kentucky holds the marks for most appearances and wins in the NCAA Tournament, among other records.
Though it has yet to win a national title, Gonzaga has flourished under coach Mark Few. The Bulldogs have played in every NCAA Tournament since 1999 and have the longest active streak of consecutive weeks ranked in the Associated Press Top 25 poll (114 polls, dating to 2017).
Few and Calipari are friends and have scheduled nonconference games against one another before when Calipari coached Memphis.
“We talk like three times a week and all of a sudden he was like, ‘You want to play?’ So you know me. I say, ‘Fine by me.’ I mean, that was it almost to a T,” Few told The Athletic.
–Field Level Media
