For decades, the SEC Tournament was often the Kentucky Wildcats’ playground.
But entering this week in Nashville, the Wildcats had not won multiple games in the same SEC Tournament since 2018, a surprising drought for a program that has historically dominated the event.
That year, John Calipari’s Wildcats won the tournament championship, defeating Tennessee in the final and cutting down the nets in Nashville.
Since then, things have looked different for Kentucky in the SEC Tournament. The Wildcats struggled
to put together runs, with early exits becoming common across several seasons. Kentucky actually failed to win an SEC Tournament game in three out of Calipari’s final four seasons, marking the worst period the program has ever endured when it comes to conference tournaments.
The streak even spanned two coaching eras, carrying from the end of the Calipari era into the first season under Mark Pope, who won just one game in his debut season.
The drought was notable because Kentucky has long owned this event. The Wildcats have more SEC Tournament championships than any other program, with 32 titles in conference history.
For a program accustomed to playing deep into the weekend and cutting down nets in Nashville, going several years without stringing together multiple wins stood out.
That finally changed this week.
With back-to-back wins over LSU and Missouri, Kentucky has now broken that streak and put itself back in position to make a run in Nashville.
It may not have come the way Kentucky fans hoped. Ideally, the Wildcats would not have needed to play on Wednesday and Thursday. But for the first time in several years, Kentucky fans finally get to stay multiple nights in Nashville.
Whether the Wildcats can keep the momentum going remains to be seen.
But for the first time in a long time, Kentucky has once again found itself doing what it used to do regularly in March: Winning multiple games in the SEC and NCAA Tournaments.
