Rick Barnes joins Exclusive Coaching Club in Win over Kentucky

Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes joined an exclusive club Tuesday night in Knoxville. It’s not exactly SNL’s Five-Timers Club, but this group does include some of the best to ever strut down a college basketball sideline.

With Tennessee’s 76-63 victory over Kentucky at Thompson-Boling Arena, Barnes improved his record against Kentucky to 9-7 as the Vols’ head coach and 10-9 overall. Barnes is just the 13th coach in college basketball history to record ten wins over Kentucky. He’s the second to do so this year. Bruce Pearl notched his tenth win over the Wildcats last month at Auburn Arena.

The coaches in the Kentucky 10-Win Club range from Hall of Fame, all-time greats to ‘Really, that guy?’ Barnes is one of just two coaches in the club with a winning record over the Cats.

Coaches in the Kentucky 10-Win Club

13. Bruce Pearl, 10-16, Tennessee and Auburn

12. Roy Williams, 10-10, Kansas and North Carolina

Even though Ol’ Roy was .500 against the Wildcats, he was 1-2 against them in the NCAA Tournament, falling to Kentucky in the second round as the Kansas head coach in 1999 and in the 2011 Elite Eight. He got him in the postseason, but could not contain Malik Monk in Las Vegas.

11. Rick Barnes, 10-9, Texas and Tennessee

10. C.M. Newton, 10-32, Alabama and Vanderbilt

It took C.M. Newton 32 seasons to beat his alma mater ten times. Maybe that’s why UK waited so long to invite him back to Lexington as an administrator.

9. Wimp Sanderson, 11-18, Alabama

8. Don DeVoe, 11-14, Tennessee and Florida

7. Kevin Stallings, 12-23, Vanderbilt

As much as we liked to poke fun at Kevin from The Office Stallings, hindsight tells us the marriage between him and Vanderbilt was perfect. Neither the coach nor the program have experienced success since his surprising departure for Pitt in 2016.

6. Dean Smith, 13-3, North Carolina

If you want to know why older generations of Kentucky fans loathe North Carolina with the fire of a thousand suns, it’s because of Dean Smith. The Wildcats beat the Tar Heels in 1974. They would not win another over UNC until 2000. Smith’s last victory over Kentucky sent Jerry Stackhouse and Rasheed Wallace to the 1995 Final Four.

5. Roy Skinner, 14-18, Vanderbilt

4. Ray Mears, 15-15, Tennessee

3. Bob Knight, 15-18, Indiana

The dictator of the Hoosiers had a winning record over the Wildcats until his career waned in the 90s. Even so, few losses haunted Knight more than the defeat to Joe B. Hall’s squad in the 1975 Mideast Regional Final.

2. Billy Donovan, 17-29, Florida

Oddly enough, Kentucky fans never took out their Florida basketball frustrations on Donovan. Even though they were the Wildcats’ top SEC rival for two decades, players like Joakim Noah and Matt Walsh received all of the BBN’s Florida vitriol. Maybe it’s because Donovan was a former UK assistant? Maybe it’s because he almost returned to Lexington, twice? Either way, nothing has been the same since he left for the NBA in 2015.

1. Dale Brown, 18-33, LSU