The last time Kentucky played Georgetown University, the stakes were high with a trip to the 1984 NCAA championship game on the line. This time, it won’t count.

For the first time since the Hoyas defeated the Wildcats in the national semifinals in Seattle in 1984, the two teams will meet this time in an exhibition game at Rupp Arena. It will be the last of two exhibition games for the Wildcats, who defeated No. 1 Purdue 78-65 last Friday night.

Overall, Kentucky has played Georgetown twice, the most recent was a 53-40 loss to the Hoyas more than four decades ago in the Final Four semifinals. The Wildcats led Georgetown 29-22 at halftime but scored just 11 points in the second half and made just three field goals. Kentucky didn’t score for 10 minutes in the second half.

“The Georgetown Hoyas, one of the great programs in college basketball, and they have one of the best coaches in coach Ed Cooley,” Kentucky coach Mark Pope said. “Tough, tough team. It’s going to be a big-time game in Rupp Arena.”

Pope was pleased with his team’s performance against the Boilermakers last week and added that his team withstood Purdue’s veteran presence on the court.

“What I was really excited about in the Purdue game was, I was afraid we were going to feel small because Purdue’s frontline is so veteran, so physical,” Pope said. “At least in that one game, I didn’t feel like we were small and that made me feel really good.”

Much like his team’s exhibition opener against Purdue, Pope doesn’t “want to lose the progress of our team.”

“The most important thing is us getting better, but working hard to win games is an unbelievable vehicle for us to also get better,” Pope said. "It's kind of like the Purdue scout. We're taking a deep dive into the teams and then just cherry-picking little slices of the scout that fit with our team's progression right now. That's kind of how we're rolling with this. It's not a full-on intensive scout that's going to take us away from our team's progress, but we're using it in the ways that we can right now.”

Pope offered an injury update on Jaland Lowe, who's nursing a shoulder injury. Lowe was held out of contact during an open practice for media members and family members on Wednesday. He added that he’s “careful with him, so we can be fully healthy when we start the season.”

As his team inches closer toward the season opener set for Tuesday against Nicholls State, Pope likes the makeup of this year’s squad.

“I haven't coached a team this deep before,” he said. “It's one of the challenges that we're really excited about this year is. It's a rich person's problem, right? We're really blessed in the sense of having such an incredibly deep team and trying to fit these guys together. But man, we feel like we have some speed, some mobility, some toughness.”


Photo courtesy of Kentucky Today