Kentucky opens the 2026-27 season tonight at Rupp Arena with Manhattan in town, and on paper this one doesn’t figure to last long. The Wildcats enter ranked 23rd in both the USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll and the Associated Press Top 25, while the Jaspers are projected to finish 10th in the 13-team Metro Conference and haven’t reached the NCAA Tournament in more than a decade.
That mismatch has shifted a lot of the attention away from the scoreboard and toward Kentucky junior guard Kam Williams. He missed time after breaking his foot in January, came back less than two months later, then suffered another setback in the offseason. That has kept him out of every preseason event, from Big Blue Madness to the exhibition wins over Little Rock, Texas Tech and Central Florida.
Mark Pope said there’s no reason to expect that to change before tipoff.
"For him, it’s a day-to-day (situation)," Pope said. "We’re operating under such extreme caution that it’s going to be when he’s ready. ...
We’re in a little bit of terrain where, any time you have a Jones fracture and then you have like a setback like he did, you just have to operate with extreme caution. That’s the space we’re operating in.
"And so we’ll have green lights - we’re going to require every light to be green before we put him on the court for a game."
The game is set for 7 p.m. and will be streamed on SEC Network+, not a traditional TV channel. Noah Frary will handle play-by-play, Jon Hood is on analysis and Michelle Knezovic will be the sideline reporter.
BetMGM lists Kentucky as a 33.5-point favorite, with the over/under set at 158.5.
For fans following along on the radio, Tom Leach and Jack Givens will have the UK call on 840 AM in Louisville and on 630 AM and 98.1 FM in Lexington, with online audio available through UKAthletics.com.
Kentucky’s nonconference slate is already rolling after exhibition wins over Little Rock, Texas Tech and UCF, and tonight starts the stretch that includes James Madison, Kansas, Indiana, Louisville and North Carolina before the calendar turns deeper into SEC play. The Wildcats’ 2026-27 roster features Zoom Diallo, Braydon Hawthorne, Zyon Hawthorne, Franck Kepnang, Justin McBride, Milan Momcilovic, Malachi Moreno, Jerone Morton, Ousmane N’Diaye, Trent Noah, Reece Potter, Alex Wilkins, Kam Williams and Mason Williams.
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Kentucky Heads Into Tennessee With Stakes This Rivalry Rarely Sees
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The setting only adds to the intrigue. Both teams still have realistic postseason paths, and the stakes are high enough that the result could shape the rest of their schedules as much as the standings. It also gives Kentucky a fresh coaching wrinkle to watch in the 122nd meeting between these schools, with Will Stein and Josh Heupel set to guide the next chapter of a rivalry that rarely has this much national relevance attached to it. [Read more 🡒]