Largest crowds for UK sports

Greetings BBN.

A recent Kentucky Baseball home game vs. Tennessee at Kentucky Proud Park marked the largest home crowd ever for the Bat Cats. That’s what a top-five matchup in this series will do in the middle of what might be the baseball team’s best season ever.

While they’ve got BBN packing the ballpark, let’s take a look at the rest of UK’s big sports and see the other attendance records they have:

Football: #7 Kentucky vs #15 Florida 10/20/2007 (71,024)

UK’s teams under Stoops have filled Kroger Field to the breaking point several times in recent years, but before the 2015 renovations, the stadium could hold a lot more people. A sellout pre-2015 could mean a 70,000+ crowd, and that’s what showed up for the UK vs Tim Tebow game in 2007, when UK was just seven days removed from their unforgettable triple-overtime win over #1 LSU. So naturally, BBN was going bananas, anticipating a chance to break the Florida streak with a team that had already beaten two top-10 teams at home.

Men’s Basketball: #3 Kentucky vs Louisville 1/2/2010 (24,479)

Calipari’s first game against Louisville was a highly-anticipated one, and it was as intense as the U-of-L rivalry gets, with five technical fouls and 51 personals. That season’s 68-66 home win over North Carolina had the second-highest all-time attendance, so Cal’s first season had the entire BBN packing the stadium like they never had before and might never since, with recent renovations shrinking capacity.

Women’s Basketball (Memorial Coliseum only): #7 Kentucky vs #6 Old Dominion 2/5/1983 (10,622)

You might think since Memorial Coliseum’s listed capacity is 8,500, they really squeezed in there for this top-10 matchup in 1983, but before 1990 it was 11,500. This game seems a bit odd to me: playing a nonconference game against a small school like Old Dominion in February, but they’re the #6 team in the country? I guess scheduling was a lot different in the 80s.

Baseball: #3 Kentucky vs #4 Tennessee 4/20/2024 (7,304)

The BBN is fully supporting the Bat Cats this season, and the hype is real for this team as they are 35-10, the No. 4 team in the country, and the No. 1 team in the SEC. They have a chance to make history this season with more than just record home crowds: they can win the SEC regular-season title outright for the first time ever, can win the SEC Tournament for the first time ever, and can make the College World Series for the first time ever.

Go Cats!