In just over 20 months, the long dormant Indiana vs. Kentucky basketball series will resume.
The Hoosiers and Wildcats have agreed to play four games beginning in 2025.
The regular season series hit a snag following Indiana’s 2011 win over Kentucky in Bloomington, and many Hoosier fans blamed Wildcats coach John Calipari for hitting the pause button. And for his part, Calipari did say publicly he had no interest in returning to Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall.
But former Indiana coach Tom Crean says Calipari made an effort to resume the series long ago.
“It should have never gone away,” Crean said of the series on the KSR Preshow on Wednesday. “I mean, it just shouldn’t [have] but it did. And as I’ve said numerous times in the past, John [Calipari] actually tried to bring it back by helping us get into that [CBS Sports] Classic that they do with North Carolina, UCLA, and Ohio State.”
The CBS Sports Classic dates back to 2014 and would have presented an opportunity for IU and Kentucky to play every third year, along with games against North Carolina and UCLA. It started three years after the now defunct Crossroads Classic and was generally held on the same weekend.
Crean says Indiana was offered a spot in the CBS Sports event, but the IU administration passed in favor of the Crossroads.
“We were offered that position and our administration at the time didn’t want to do it because they didn’t want to mess with the Crossroads Classic that was being played in Indianapolis along with Purdue, Butler, and Notre Dame,” Crean said. “And instead of looking for a date to change the [Crossroads] Classic, they just decided, let’s not play that game, which I was never in agreement with because I thought it would have been a perfect time to get that series going again and it would have maybe brought it back to life and that was all from Coach Calipari and CBS with that.”
The Crossroads Classic contract was renewed in 2013 to run through 2016, while the CBS Sports Classic was announced in May, 2014. So Indiana would have had to restructure the Crossroads contract to make it work. And as the most significant financial draw for the Crossroads event, they likely could have found alternative dates. IU played home games against mid and low-majors each of the next three years on the Saturday a week before the Crossroads.
Indiana vs. Kentucky is a series that dates back to 1924. The programs have met 57 times, including every year from 1969 through 2011. From 1992 to 2006 the teams played at neutral sites (Indianapolis and Louisville) with the crowd split roughly 50/50.
Most recently, the programs met in the 2012 and 2016 NCAA Tournaments, with Crean-led IU winning the most recent contest.
The revival of the series, which begins in Dec. 2025, features two games at Rupp Arena in Lexington in 2025 and 2027, a 2026 game at Lucas Oil Stadium, and a 2028 game at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall.
“The fact that it’s there, I think it’s great,” Crean said of the series returning. “It went away. It shouldn’t have, but it did. There was a lot of needless drama inside of that and it just is what it is, but it’s back. And I think that’s great for college basketball. I think it’s great for television and it’s great for the fanbases.”
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