Kentucky

Kentucky takes two losses on the first day of March — a month that has not been kind to the Wildcats

Published

1 year ago

March 1, 2025

Kentucky takes two losses on the first day of March — a month that has not been kind to the Wildcats

Kentucky trailed by 15 points at halftime, then followed it up by turning it over six times in the first seven possessions of the second half with zero field goal attempts. Three minutes of some of the worst basketball this team has played all season, coming after finishing the first half with zero made field goals in the final 7:21, missing ten straight going into the break. 11 straight minutes without scoring a basket.

The game was so bad they literally just turned off the ABC feed and started showing Texas Tech vs. Kansas with the occasional NHL look-in.

(They actually blamed it on technical difficulties at Rupp Arena — apparently the ABC truck equipment caught on fire — but the timing was pretty suspicious.)

We should’ve known it just wasn’t meant to be when a guy averaging 2.1 threes per game hit not one, but two banked-in shots from deep on back-to-back possessions just over five minutes in. Actually, it was that 12-0 stretch pushing a one-point Auburn lead to 13 points with 14:20 to go in the half. It wouldn’t get closer than six points the rest of the way, no closer than 13 points in the second half while ballooning to as many as 22 points with 14:31 left on the clock.

Nothing went right for the Wildcats inside Rupp Arena, ending with the Tigers taking an actual belt and using it to recreate the ass-whooping that took place early Saturday afternoon.

No. 1 Auburn celebrates after beating Kentucky in Rupp Arena for the first time since 1988. pic.twitter.com/fMiQeCXgLK
— Vince Wolfram (@vincewolfram15) March 1, 2025

Thought things were bad then? Mark Pope made sure to really pee on your Cheerios a few short minutes later by announcing Jaxson Robinson would be undergoing season-ending wrist surgery this week, officially wrapping up his time at Kentucky and playing college basketball overall.

I’ll take your 16-point home loss and raise you a second-leading scorer out for the year, right before the team starts its postseason run. Sound good?

You wonder how much that news impacted this team mentally going into a game like this — Koby Brea said the Wildcats learned “yesterday or the day before” that Robinson would have the surgery, a massive dark cloud hanging over their heads before hosting the No. 1 team in the country. Sure, you can have a next-man-up mindset and strive to play for your brother, maybe even make up the counting stats lost on any given night, but that doesn’t replace the threat that is Robinson as a gravity shooter and scorer. It’s the idea that he’s one touch away from going off, someone you always have to account for every second he’s on the floor.

Others have stepped up in his absence OK, I suppose, but it’s been a by-committee scramble hoping and praying you have enough in the tank elsewhere or one bench piece unexpectedly going nuclear to make up the difference. Tonight? A combined five bench points with one total bucket in 50 combined minutes between five players.

Pope was asked about the team’s energy and if it was where it needed to be taking on the best team in college basketball. Like he always does, the Kentucky head coach shouldered the blame and said more could have been done to get the Wildcats in the right headspace before this one.

“I would love to make excuses on that. That ultimately falls on my shoulders,” Pope said. “… I failed to lead our team today to have the energy that is required for us to come out and be great. It’s not a lack of desire. There’s a — it was a whole cocktail of energy miscues, some being sped up miscues, some terrific shot-making from Auburn. All put together resulted in a really, really terrible day for us.”

In reality, Kentucky looked like a team that just found out its star scorer and veteran leader, the player once described as Pope’s ‘interpreter’ going into the year after joining forces three seasons ago at BYU, will never play another game at this level. That’s a devastating blow for any program and must be accounted for when talking about what went wrong and why the game was never really competitive, especially after some early bad luck — again, Auburn’s Miles Kelly banked in two threes in the first six minutes en route to a career-high nine 3-pointers and a season-high 30 points.

Let me put it this way, actually: Koby Brea (21), Andrew Carr (20), Lamont Butler (15) and Amari Williams (13) combined for 69 points while National Player of the Year favorite Johni Broome was held to just nine points on 3-9 shooting and 3-7 at the line in 33 minutes. UK also took 38 free throws, good for second on the year and first among high-major competition. If you would have told me those would be the numbers before the game, I’d ask you where we’re celebrating after the win.

Instead, the Wildcats trailed for 39:21 of 40 total minutes in a double-digit home loss.

There were obvious reasons that happened and the result was what it was. We already talked about the bench production, but those 18 turnovers were killers — Auburn scored 21 points off turnovers compared to just nine for Kentucky on eight Tiger giveaways — as were just four total made 3-pointers on a season-low 17 attempts from deep. You just won’t win many games with any of those numbers, even if you’ve got a four-man group producing the way Brea, Carr, Butler and Williams did.

At the end of the day, Auburn is a juggernaut and anything short of a Final Four would be a disappointment for Bruce Pearl’s group — the Tigers now have a higher KenPom team rating (+37.53) than Kentucky’s 38-1 team in 2014-15 (+36.91), for those curious. They’ve been racking up double-digit wins all season en route to 16 Quad 1 victories and an all-time resume. Losing by 16 to this team isn’t something to lose your mind over, no matter how slow and painful the death in a game that inexcusably lasted two hours and 38 minutes thanks to 44 total fouls called, 69 free throws and seven trillion monitor reviews.

You live with that. Can Kentucky live with the news Mark Pope delivered on Jaxson Robinson’s season-ending surgery at the podium just minutes later? That feels like another story with just two regular season games to go and the SEC Tournament just 11 days away, Selection Sunday four days after that.

Very rarely do you lose twice on the same day, but Big Blue Nation felt that on the first day of a month that has not been kind to this fanbase in recent years. Hopefully the rest of March finishes better than it started — they sure could use it.

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Kentucky

Data centers, election changes and other bills moving in Kentucky

Published

3 hours ago

March 9, 2026

Press Room

Data centers, election changes and other bills moving in Kentucky

FRANKFORT, Ky. — If the current legislative session was the Kentucky Derby, we’d be coming around the final turn and entering the stretch.

Feb. 9 marks the 42nd day of the 2026 Kentucky General Assembly, with 18 to go. Lawmakers will continue to meet daily for the next three weeks until the veto period begins in early April, with two more days at the Capitol after that for legislators to vote on overriding potential vetoes.

The filing deadlines for new bills were last week, and many pieces of legislation are moving quickly in Frankfort. Here’s a quick look at bills that advanced last week that will be worth watching:

SB 8 — A reworked PSC

Senate Bill 8 would change the member requirements for the Kentucky Public Service Commission — which regulates more than 1,100 utilities operating statewide — and add two new members who would be appointed by the state auditor, effectively diluting the governor’s power or oversight of PSC membership.

Under the bill, the chair of the commission would be elected amongst the commissioners, not appointed by the governor. The chair’s salary? Also determined by the commissioners.

Sen. Brandon Smith, R-Hazard, the bill’s sponsor, said the legislation will help support Kentuckians in reviewing utility rate cases and hopefully hasten the process.

Critics of the bill raised concerns about a section that would make the attorney general the sole representative for customers, requiring advocacy groups to prove a “special and unique” interest in the case — likely cutting advocacy groups out of the picture and preventing them from intervening in cases.

While on the floor, Smith introduced an amendment removing that section and creating a framework to allow advocates and organizations with legitimate interests to intervene.

Although the bill has passed the Senate, it will likely receive pushback from the governor’s office. In a Team Kentucky press conference, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear criticized the bill and the Republican-led legislature’s attempts at moving power from the governor’s office to the state auditor.

“They’ve done these shenanigans for six straight years,” Beshear said. “This is my sixth session as a governor, four as attorney general and a couple of special sessions. I’ve never seen them try to move something from a Republican officeholder to a Democratic officeholder, but I’ve seen them try to move a whole lot in the other direction.”

The bill passed 30-5 through the Senate on March 6. It now heads to the House.

SB 199 — Pesticide warnings

Senate Bill 199, sponsored by Sen. Jason Howell, R-Murray, would make any pesticide registered with the Kentucky Department of Agriculture or the Environmental Protection Agency that has an EPA-approved label automatically fit Kentucky’s warning label requirements. If passed, that would make it much more difficult for Kentuckians to sue pesticide manufacturers for adverse health risks later on.

Although it might not seem controversial at first glance, the bill united both hardline Republicans and Democrats on the Senate floor, with many raising concerns about the health risks of pesticide use. Several Republicans, including Sen. Lindsey Tichenor, R-Smithfield, Sen. Philip Wheeler, R-Pikeville, and Sen. Shelly Funke Frommeyer, R-Alexandria, spoke against the bill and questioned the lobbying power of chemical companies that manufacture pesticides.

Wheeler brought up previous chemical agents that were found to be major causes of cancer, including DDT and Agent Orange, as well as the $7.25 billion proposed settlement from Bayer to resolve thousands of lawsuit that claim its weedkilling product Roundup caused cancer.

“If we give immunity in these cases, we’re essentially saying, if these claims are later proven to be true, and some of them are in pending litigation, we’re basically saying that these Kentuckians don’t matter, these Kentuckians don’t deserve to collect,” Wheeler said.

The bill passed through the Senate on March 5 with a 23-13 vote and will head to the House.

HB 534 — Elections omnibus

House Bill 534, from Rep. DJ Johnson, R-Owensboro, drew significant scrutiny before passing through the House. The elections legislation with several notable changes to current law moved to the Senate on a 53-40 vote on March 5, with several Republicans joining Democrats in opposition.

Some of the bill’s notable provisions include:

● Monthly reviews of noncitizens on Kentucky voter rolls, with a requirement to remove names of ineligible voters and notification sent to the state’s attorney general, along with authorization for the State Board of Elections to work with the federal government to identify noncitizens who are registered to vote;

● Removing names of individuals convicted of a felony whose cases are currently on appeal from voter rolls;

● Allowing candidates for judicial office to publicly discuss their political party affiliation;

● And allowing Kentucky politicians who currently hold elected federal office to be a candidate for two different federal offices in one election, if one of the offices is decided by the United States Electoral College. The only office that applies to is U.S. president.

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican who has not hesitated at times to vote against President Donald Trump’s policies, has not shut the door on speculation he may make a run for the White House in 2028. He would also be up for reelection that year as a U.S. senator, a role he’s held since early 2011. State Rep. Joshua Watkins, D-Louisville, was the only representative to speak out against the provision during the March 5 vote on the House floor.

Other Democrats spoke up with concerns about disenfranchising voters appealing felony convictions, in the event the verdicts against them were to be later overturned. And multiple party members were critical of the provisions pertaining to noncitizens, with Rep. Adrielle Camuel, D-Lexington, calling them “another example of a nonproblem” aimed at riling up voters to be concerned about “a very major situation that isn’t actually happening.”

The bill advanced on a relatively narrow margin and is pending in the Senate.

HB 593 — Data center energy costs

House Bill 593 was filed by Rep. Josh Bray, R-Mount Vernon, with a group of five co-sponsors that includes House Speaker David Osborne, R-Prospect. The legislation would take steps to ensure companies hoping to build data centers in Kentucky are legitimate and are able to take on additional energy costs instead of dropping them on consumers.

The bill from Bray, who previously co-chaired the legislature’s Artificial Intelligence Task Force, includes several clauses regulating data centers, which are critical for AI usage but often require huge amounts of energy, a hurdle that frequently draws community criticism.

The legislation requires a nonrefundable application fee of at least $75,000 — Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, said the clause could help scare off “cowboy developers” who buy large amounts of land in hopes of building a data center on the property but are unfamiliar with the development process — and requires the company to pay for an electric supplier study, with provisions aimed at ensuring the data center does not drive up service rates for non-data center customers.

The bill is on its way to the Senate after passing in the House on a 90-4 vote on March 4. It has not yet been given a committee assignment.

Reach Keely Doll at kdoll@courier-journal.com. Reach Lucas Aulbach at laulbach@courier-journal.com. Reach The Courier Journal’s politics team at cjpolitics@courier-journal.com.

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Kentucky

KHSAA Sweet 16 bracket, field for Kentucky girls basketball championships

Published

15 hours ago

March 8, 2026

Press Room

KHSAA Sweet 16 bracket, field for Kentucky girls basketball championships

Seventh Region champion Assumption will open play Wednesday against Calloway County.
Sixth Region champion Bullitt East will face Franklin-Simpson in a first-round game Thursday.

The field is nearly set for the 2026 Clark’s Pump-N-Shop Girls Sweet 16.

The tournament is scheduled for Wednesday-Saturday, March 11-14, at Rupp Arena in Lexington.

The field will include at least nine of the 16 teams in the final Kentucky High School Basketball Media Poll — No. 1 George Rogers Clark, No. 2 Assumption, No. 3 Simon Kenton, No. 5 Calloway County, No. 7 North Laurel, No. 9 Taylor County, No. 11 Notre Dame, No. 14 Ashland Blazer and No. 15 Henderson County.

Fifteen regional champions have been decided. The last regional final is set set for Sunday night — Paul Dunbar (25-4) vs. No. 8 Frederick Douglass (23-7) in the 11th.

Here is the Sweet 16 schedule:

Wednesday, March 11

11 a.m. – 11th Region champion vs. Henderson County (24-9)

1:30 p.m. – Assumption (24-5) vs. Calloway County (33-2)

6 p.m. – Notre Dame (24-7) vs. Pikeville (22-8)

8:30 p.m. – Taylor County (27-6) vs. West Jessamine (22-12)

Thursday, March 12

11 a.m. – Bullitt East (19-12) vs. Franklin-Simpson (24-7)

1:30 p.m. – Ashland Blazer (26-5) vs. Simon Kenton (31-2)

6 p.m. – Owensboro Catholic (26-9) vs. Letcher County Central (23-10)

8:30 p.m. – George Rogers Clark (29-2) vs. North Laurel (25-6)

Friday, March 13

11 a.m. – Third Region champion-Henderson County winner vs. Assumption-Calloway County winner

1:30 p.m. – Notre Dame-Pikeville winner vs. Taylor County-West Jessamine winner

6 p.m. – Ashland Blazer-Simon Kenton winner vs. Owensboro Catholic-Letcher County Central winner

8:30 p.m. – Bullitt East-Franklin-Simpson winner vs. George Rogers Clark-North Laurel winner

Saturday, March 14

11 a.m. – Semifinal No. 1

1:30 p.m. – Semifinal No. 2

7:30 p.m. – Final

This story will be updated.

Jason Frakes: 502-582-4046; jfrakes@courier-journal.com; Follow on X @kyhighs.

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Kentucky

KY workers struggle in weakened unions while execs cash in | Opinion

Published

1 day ago

March 8, 2026

Press Room

KY workers struggle in weakened unions while execs cash in | Opinion

House Bill 585 is about making sure Kentucky works for the people who do the work, not just those at the top.

Chad Aull and Adrielle Camuel
| Opinion Contributors

Kentucky’s 2017 “right-to-work” law has weakened unions and is being blamed for stagnant worker wages.
A recent poll indicates that a majority of Kentuckians support making it easier for workers to form unions.
House Bill 585 seeks to repeal the “right-to-work” law and strengthen unions.

“Right-to-work” isn’t working in Kentucky.

Kentuckians are struggling to keep up with rising costs and it’s not hard to see. Workers’ wages are not keeping up with basic needs, such as housing, groceries, health care and childcare. Some people need multiple jobs just to feed their families. While hardworking Kentuckians struggle, the wealthy and well-connected continue to receive tax breaks and special treatment from politicians in Frankfort and Washington.

This didn’t happen by accident. This was by design.

In 2017, we saw a dramatic shift against working families. The first order of business for the new Republican majority in the Kentucky House was passing so-called “right-to-work” legislation, House Bill 1. This legislation weakened unions and led to lower pay for workers. Nearly a decade has passed, and workers are not thriving in Kentucky like they said they would.

Kentuckians want support for workers

Big business has virtually no limits on their influence in Frankfort. They spend exceedingly large amounts of money on lobbying the Kentucky supermajority to shape laws to further enrich themselves. When workers try to organize, demand fair wages, safe workplaces and decent benefits, big business uses the profits they’ve gathered off the backs of working people to directly advocate against them.

Some wealthy business interests claim “right-to-work” has contributed to the state’s economic growth over the past several years, but whose growth is it, really? The fact of the matter is corporate profits are soaring and executives are cashing in, while families are left scraping by.

It’s true Kentucky has seen record-breaking economic momentum under the leadership of Gov. Andy Beshear, including $43 billion in private sector investments and over 63,000 new jobs. However, Beshear agrees Kentucky can attract businesses and investment without simultaneously suppressing unions.

A recent statewide poll conducted by KyPolicy found that 85% of Kentucky voters want the state legislature to prioritize raising worker pay and improving worker benefits. This poll also found that 60% of Kentuckians support making it easier for workers to join or form a union.

Kentuckians are telling us they want us to focus on supporting workers, and our colleagues in the General Assembly should listen.

A fight worth having

Bad faith politicians in Frankfort will tell you we have a worker shortage. They pin the problem on Kentuckians not willing to work, and absolve big business from any accountability. But in reality, we have a wage problem. Repealing “right-to-work” is a necessary step toward fixing that imbalance.

That’s why we have introduced House Bill 585, legislation to repeal Kentucky’s “right-to-work” law and restore Kentucky’s ability to have strong unions fighting for workers’ rights. House Bill 585 is about making sure Kentucky works for the people who do the work, not just those at the top.

Across the country, states with stronger unions have higher wages, better benefits and safer workplaces. Union workers earn more, are more likely to have health insurance and retirement security and are better protected on the job. When unions are strong, workers are strong.

This is a fight worth having. It’s a fight working people are ready for, and it’s a fight we cannot afford to keep putting off.

Standing together is how workers have always won dignity, fairness and opportunity. This is how Kentucky can build a stronger future for everyone.

Working Kentuckians deserve better.

Rep. Chad Aull represents Kentucky’s 79th House District in Lexington

Rep. Adrielle Camuel represents Kentucky’s 93rd House District in Lexington

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