The Wildcats’ last NCAA Tournament game in a football stadium didn’t go well.
And it happened in the same spot where these Cats will be playing. Kentucky took a 38-0 record into the Final Four in 2015, when the Cats were defeated by Wisconsin in the national semifinals in Lucas Oil Stadium, two wins shy of a perfect season. Earlier this week, NBA star Devin Booker — a key reserve on that UK team — weighed in with his first post on X in more than a month. “Hoops shouldn’t be played in a stadium,” Booker said. Of course, that Kentucky-Wisconsin game was played with that full-stadium seating layout. And the Cats shot well from distance that night. They just didn’t shoot very many. John Calipari’s team was 3-for-5 on 3-pointers against the Badgers.
The previous year, Kentucky upset both Louisville and Michigan — with Aaron Harrison draining big 3-pointers in both games — in a regional at Lucas Oil Stadium, which had a similar setup then to the one that will be used this weekend. The Cats were 11-for-25 on 3-pointers in those two games. Harrison hit another game-winning 3 to beat Wisconsin in that year’s Final Four in AT&T Stadium — home of the Dallas Cowboys — before losing to UConn in the national title game. UK was 2-for-5 from deep in the win over Wisconsin and 5-for-16 on 3s in the loss to the Huskies.
Two years earlier, Kentucky won the 2012 national championship in the Superdome in New Orleans, and the Cats were 8-for-21 on 3s over the two games that weekend. Perhaps a sign of good things to come? The Alamodome — site of next week’s Final Four — is where Tubby Smith and the Wildcats cut down the nets as 1998 national champions. Oh, and there is one player on this Kentucky team who’s been in this spot before.
Lamont Butler was a junior guard at San Diego State two years ago when he hit one of the most famous shots in recent NCAA Tournament history, a buzzer-beating jumper to lift the Aztecs over Florida Atlantic in the 2023 Final Four at NRG Stadium in Houston. “It’s a little different,” Butler acknowledged of playing basketball in a football stadium. “But, you know, once you get that first day of practice and kind of feel out the rims and feel out the distance and things like that — you get used to it quick.” Of hitting that famous shot in such a peculiar setting?
“At that point, I didn’t even notice,” he said. “I didn’t even notice there were people on the outside. I was just trying to win the game.” And as Butler walked through the halls of Lucas Oil Stadium on Thursday afternoon, he was sure his teammates — with a couple of hours on the court to get their bearings — would be just fine. “It’s regular,” he said. “At the end of the day, we’re on a basketball court. It’s the same dimensions — 94 by 50 feet. It’s just basketball.”
