When was the last time Kentucky won a NCAA Tournament championship?

Kentucky basketball is one of the true blue bloods in college basketball but it has been a little while since they last cut down the nets.

When you think of elite college basketball programs, Kentucky basketball is one that jumps right to the top of the list. Among the bluest of the blue bloods, Kentucky has built a tradition of winning dating back to the glory days of Adolf Rupp, the namesake of the Wildcats’ current arena.

The current architect of the Wildcats is John Calipari, who has a national championship under his belt and has helped Kentucky maintain its status as an SEC powerhouse since his arrival in 2009. This year’s edition of the Wildcats is one of college basketball’s best teams, a potential No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament that made a statement by blowing out Kansas at Allen Fieldhouse during the Big 12/SEC Challenge in late January.

The women’s program is having a tougher year, going 9-10 on the season with a 2-7 mark in SEC play. At this juncture, it looks like the Wildcats will need to win the SEC’s automatic bid during the conference tournament to punch their ticket to the NCAA Tournament.

This year’s Wildcats have an excellent chance of adding to Kentucky’s championship tradition, but when was the last time Kentucky cut down the nets?

Has Kentucky basketball ever won a championship?

The answer to this question is an obvious yes. Kentucky has won the NCAA Tournament a whopping eight times, trailing only UCLA among all programs in D-I history. The program’s most recent championship came in 2012, which saw future NBA star Anthony Davis lead an uber-talented crop of freshmen to March Madness glory, and is the latest in Kentucky’s trophy collection.

NCAA Tournament Championships

• 1948, 1949, 1951, 1958, 1978, 1996, 1998, 2012

Additionally, the Wildcats also were retroactively awarded a national championship by the Helms Athletic Foundation, which went back over the historical records in 1943 to determine who the best teams in college basketball were prior to the advent of the NCAA Tournament. Rupp’s 1933 Wildcats received a Helms title.

Kentucky’s women’s basketball program has not won a championship yet but has made four deep runs to the Elite Eight. The most recent of those came back in 2013 under former head coach Matt Mitchell.

Kentucky basketball NCAA Tournament history

It feels like March Madness and Kentucky go hand-in-hand, which makes sense since the Wildcats lead all NCAA programs with 59 tournament appearances. Kentucky also is the top college basketball program in terms of NCAA Tournament Wins (131), NCAA Tournament Games (148), Sweet 16 appearances (45) and Elite Eight Appearances (34) while trailing only UCLA and North Carolina with 17 Final Four Appearances.

A full list of the years Kentucky has appeared in the NCAA Tournament is listed below.

• 1942
• 1945
• 1948
• 1949
• 1951
• 1952
• 1955
• 1956
• 1957
• 1958
• 1959
• 1961
• 1962
• 1964
• 1966
• 1968
• 1969
• 1970
• 1971
• 1972
• 1973
• 1975
• 1977
• 1978
• 1980
• 1983
• 1984,
• 1985
• 1986
• 1987
• 1988*
• 1992
• 1993
• 1994
• 1995
• 1996
• 1997
• 1998
• 1999
• 2000
• 2001
• 2002
• 2003
• 2004
• 2005
• 2006
• 2007
• 2008
• 2010
• 2011
• 2012
• 2014
• 2015
• 2016
• 2017
• 2018
• 2019

* vacated

The women’s program has reached the NCAA Tournament 16 times, with all but five of their trips to March Madness coming since 2000. A full list of years that the Wildcats’ women’s team has reached the NCAA Tournament follows here:

• 1982, 1983, 1986, 1991, 1999, 2006, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2021

Kentucky basketball Final Four appearances

Kentucky has made the Final Four 17 times, ranking third all-time behind only UCLA and North Carolina. The years that Kentucky reached the Final Four are as follows:

• 1942, 1948, 1949, 1951, 1958, 1966, 1975, 1978, 1984, 1993, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015

The Kentucky women’s program has yet to reach a Final Four. They have been one win away four times, with the most recent Elite Eight trip coming in 2013.

Kentucky basketball All-Time NCAA Tournament Record

Getting to 59 NCAA Tournaments means that the Wildcats have played a lot of March Madness games. Over the course of those tournaments, Kentucky has appeared in 184 games and won 131 of them, good for an outstanding winning percentage of .712 in the NCAA Tournament.

That 131-47 record is the envy of all college basketball programs, which makes the lack of recent success for Kentucky feel a bit surprising. The Wildcats’ two-year tournament drought will definitely end on Selection Sunday and there’s an excellent chance that Kentucky can return to the Final Four for the first time since 2015.

The women’s program has appeared in 38 NCAA Tournament games, compiling a record of 22-16 in the process. These Wildcats will have a lot of work to do in order to have an opportunity to improve on that record in 2022.

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