Big Blue Madness is confirmed for Friday, October 11

Save the date, folks. Big Blue Madness has officially been scheduled. And we’re less than two months away — eight weeks, to be exact.

Mark Pope’s debut Madness as a coach will take place inside Rupp Arena on Friday, October 11. That will overlap with the weekend of Kentucky football’s home matchup against Vanderbilt on Saturday, Oct. 12 and Keeneland, the perfect trifecta for official visitors in attendance.

Save the date, #BBN! #BBM24 will be Friday, Oct. 11 in Rupp Arena at Central Bank Center 😼 pic.twitter.com/rYIw1I5Fsa

— Kentucky Athletics (@UKAthletics) August 15, 2024

It also confirms that Big Blue Madness will not be held inside the newly-renovated Memorial Coliseum, as hoped by some Kentucky fans. UK AD Mitch Barnhart previously hinted that a move to Memorial for BBM would not be on the table due to fan interest in the annual tipoff to basketball season — this season, at least.

“That’s an event that has been — in terms of numbers, we’ve been able to help literally 20,000 come to a Madness event so I don’t know that we want to take people out of that environment and limit the number of folks that could come,” Barnhart said in July. “I think we’re always going to look for special ways to bring our crowds in here and bring people into Memorial.

“We’ll keep looking at that but that’s an awful lot of folks to displace for a Madness crowd. I don’t know if I want to take that opportunity away from people.”

Maybe we push for Kroger Field in 2025 instead? Either way, we know where we’ll be the weekend of October 11-13.

We’ll see you at Rupp Arena.