Barnhart says Kansas trip threw off UK's non-conference schedule

Mitch Barnhart was a special guest on Kentucky Sports Radio’s Thursday morning radio show to discuss many of the major talking points surrounding his athletics department and programs at the University of Kentucky.

There were many topics to address considering all that has changed (and not changed) since the last time Barnhart spoke publicly, and among them were the groans from UK Basketball season ticket holders about the new home schedule. Only one non-conference opponent, Louisville, travels to Rupp Arena from a Power 5 league. The other visiting teams represent the Horizon League, the Northeast Conference, the MAC, the SWAC, the America East Conference, the A-Sun, and the Big South.

It’s not exactly the old December Saturdays with UNC or Indiana on the opposing bench or even a bottom-tier team from a good basketball conference.

Barnhart recognizes the problem, saying it worked out that way due to a late switch by ESPN, and that neutral site games may be coming back to campus arenas thanks to SEC expansion.

His full response to a question about the 2021-22 non-conference schedule:

“Here’s the challenge a little bit. We got into some agreements that were the neutral site agreements where some of the big games were neutral site; as our league is expanding to the Southeastern Conference is expanding to 16 teams in 2025—it could be sooner than that, you never know if it could be sooner than that—but we know that for sure in 2025, I would almost guess that there is going to be some adjustments to all of the conference scheduling, and my gut says that will probably be more than less.

So if that’s the case, then we’re going to have to be more thoughtful—not more thoughtful, very thoughtful—about what we do as it relates to non-conference scheduling. So those neutral site games and being able to make sure we’ve got 20 or 21 appearances at Rupp Arena for our men’s basketball program is going to be critical. 

We’ll walk our way through those neutral sites, but what that means is an opportunity to bring back some of those games that we’ve traditionally seen neutral site—or not traditionally, in the last six, seven years we’ve gone neutral sites—maybe get those back on our campus. 

And then number one—that was number two—the Big 12 Challenge that we’ve been playing in with home and away, we got thrown a little bit of a curveball this year. We thought we were going to get a home game out of that and we were asked to go on the road. That came very late in the game. 

Our Big 12 Challenge game last year was canceled, as you will remember. Texas was supposed to come to our place and that got canceled because of COVID problems in their program, and so we thought we were going to get a home game and that did not happen. We were asked to go to Kansas and that’s why the late adjustment to all of our schedule, so we could make sure we have enough appearances at home that allows the window to bring Tubby back and bring him back and High Point back to our program, which is awesome and I love doing that. 

But at the end of the day, I also understand some of our fans want to see the high-profile programs come into Rupp Arena, more than just Louisville. Our fans deserve that and we’re going to try to work to that as we go forward.”

Mitch Barnhart to Kentucky Sports Radio

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