What’s the biggest blowout in the Kentucky-Louisville rivalry? Will this be one of them?

A resurgent John Calipari and an embattled Kenny Payne will meet on the basketball court Thursday night for the second time as opposing coaches in the Kentucky-Louisville rivalry.

Will the second time also be the final time?

Payne might very well need a victory — or an extremely competitive game, at the very least — to save a job he’s had for less than two years. The game will be at the Yum Center, but the home of Cardinals basketball has been a relative ghost town recently, with previously unthinkable losses piling up again this season following the 4-28 debacle that was Payne’s debut as the program’s head coach.

Kentucky, meanwhile, is ranked No. 9 in the country and coming off an 87-83 win over North Carolina over the weekend, with former U of L recruiting targets Aaron Bradshaw and D.J. Wagner hitting big shots at the end to help lead UK to victory. The Wildcats are fast and deadly on offense, and Louisville has been pretty bad on both ends of the court.

It’s possible there’s as much blue as red in the Yum Center stands Thursday night. Whatever the makeup of the crowd, many around college basketball are expecting a rout. Curious things tend to happen when rivals meet, however, and the computers, at least, aren’t predicting a game that’s too lopsided.

KenPom’s predicted result is Kentucky 86, Louisville 73. (That site has the Cards with the nation’s No. 196-rated offense and 174th-best defense, by the way. UK is 14th and 45th, respectively.)

BartTorvik.com’s model says it’ll be Kentucky 86, Louisville 74. That site rates UK as the nation’s No. 17 team, with U of L at No. 186 nationally.

EvanMiya.com’s projection: Kentucky 82, Louisville 73. Not even double digits.

This rivalry is no stranger to much larger margins of victory than those.

Kentucky and Louisville resumed their regular-season series on Nov. 26, 1983 — eight months after U of L won “The Dream Game” in the NCAA Tournament, which was just the fourth meeting of the two programs over a 61-year stretch — and the 42 games played between the Cats and the Cards in the four decades since have included some laughers.

UK has won 29 of those games. Louisville has won 13. And 10 of the 42 have seen one team beat the other by 20 or more points. The team doing the beating has almost always been Kentucky.

Here’s a look at the biggest blowouts in the series since it resumed in 1983.

Biggest Kentucky-Louisville blowouts

Kentucky 88, Louisville 68 (Dec. 12, 1992): The first of a trio of 20-point Kentucky wins on this list came courtesy of a big-time performance by Jamal Mashburn in his final rivalry game. The UK junior fouled out of this one, but not before pouring in 27 points (10-for-15 from the field and 5-of-7 on 3-pointers) to go along with five rebounds and four assists as the No. 3 Wildcats ran the ninth-ranked Cardinals out of Freedom Hall. UK went to its first Final Four in nine years later that season.

Kentucky 74, Louisville 54 (Dec. 31, 1996): The defending national champions were ranked No. 3 nationally when they delivered another 20-point win in Freedom Hall over a quality Louisville team (the Cards were No. 14 at the time of this one). Five UK players scored in double figures — led by Louisville native Derek Anderson with 19 — and the Cats actually trailed the Cards by one at halftime before running away in the second half. Kentucky went to the national title game this season. U of L made it to the Elite Eight for the first time in more than a decade, but the Cardinals lost there.

Kentucky 82, Louisville 62 (Dec. 29, 2001): Rick Pitino returns to Rupp Arena … as Louisville’s head coach. Previously a UK legend after resurrecting the program from probation, Pitino was roundly booed in Rupp on this day, and his team was sent packing with a 20-point loss. Tayshaun Prince had 18 points and nine rebounds, and coach Tubby Smith scored a memorable win over his former boss.

Kentucky 65, Louisville 44 (Nov. 26, 1983): The stakes obviously were not as high, but Joe B. Hall and the Wildcats exacted some revenge for the Dream Game loss with this blowout in the first edition of the regular-season revival of the series. Jim Master scored 19 points to lead the No. 2 Wildcats, and Mark McSwain was No. 6-ranked Louisville’s top scorer with just 10 points in 12 minutes off the bench. That March, the Cats defeated Louisville 72-67 in the Sweet 16, en route to an appearance in the 1984 Final Four.

Louisville 97, Kentucky 75 (Dec. 31, 1988): The lone Louisville victory on this list. UK’s Derrick Miller scored 34 points — still a record for any player on either side in this rivalry — but Pervis Ellison had 20, and the 14th-ranked Cardinals beat the unranked and reeling Wildcats in Freedom Hall, the final rivalry game for Eddie Sutton before his ouster a few months later. UK, which lost to Northwestern State and Bowling Green earlier in the season, finished 13-19, probation followed, and Rick Pitino arrived in Lexington before the start of the next campaign. The 97 points scored by Louisville remain its school record in the series. (UK beat the Cards 103-89 in the 1991-92 season, the record for most points by any team in the series.) This was also the final rivalry game as a player for Kenny Payne, who scored 16 points — second on the team behind Ellison — in 33 minutes for the Cardinals.

Kentucky 86, Louisville 63 (Dec. 31, 2022): Kenny Payne’s return to the Louisville side of the rivalry — after spending 10 seasons as a UK assistant coach — did not go well for the Cardinals, who fell behind 21-6 before the second TV timeout and never really got close to the Cats again. It was a bounce-back game for Kentucky’s Jacob Toppin, who made 10 of 15 shots, scored 24 points, added seven rebounds, and then talked about his own mental health struggles after the UK victory. Payne’s Cardinals dropped to 2-12 and finished his first season as head coach with a 4-28 record.

Kentucky 89, Louisville 66 (Dec. 23, 1995): The juggernaut that was the 1995-96 Kentucky team did not give any quarter to the Cardinals, who were ranked No. 25 in the country when the Cats blew them out of Rupp Arena on their way to the national championship. Tony Delk scored 30 points — and went 4-of-8 on 3-pointers — Antoine Walker added 20 points and 12 rebounds, and Anthony Epps had 14 points and four steals in Rick Pitino’s most-lopsided win over Louisville in his eight seasons as head coach.

Kentucky 90, Louisville 61 (Dec. 29, 2017): The 2017-18 season marked the end of an era for Louisville, which parted ways with Rick Pitino following the scandal that rocked several major college basketball programs. The Cards haven’t been the same since. In this one, interim coach David Padgett suffered a 29-point loss in his only game leading U of L’s side of the rivalry. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander led four UK players in double figures with 24 points, and the Wildcats’ walk-ons were playing at the end. Louisville ended up going to the NIT at the end of this season, and the Cardinals have not won an NCAA Tournament game since.

Kentucky 76, Louisville 46 (Dec. 18, 1999): UK led this one 35-34 at halftime. After that, the rout was on. Louisville shot 3-for-27 from the field in the second half — and didn’t score its first bucket in the period until nearly 10 minutes had passed — and Kentucky outscored the Cards 41-12 after the break. Tayshaun Prince led all scorers with 20 points, and Jamaal Magloire blocked three shots to pass Melvin Turpin as the school’s all-time leader in that stat. He still holds that honor with 268 career blocks. Louisville regrouped to make the NCAA Tournament as a 7 seed, though the Cards were bounced in the first round. Kentucky ended up a 5 seed and lost in the second round. Neither team was ranked at the time of this game, a first for the rivalry.

Kentucky 85, Louisville 51 (Dec. 27, 1986): Three years after the Dream Game, the Wildcats delivered the biggest blowout of the series. And they did it to the defending national champions on their own court, while Louisville native Muhammad Ali watched from the stands. UK steamrolled over the Cards in Freedom Hall that day, getting 26 points from Rex Chapman, who delivered an iconic one-handed dunk amid the flurry, and dropping U of L — just nine months removed from an NCAA title — to 3-6 on the season. Denny Crum’s team righted the ship enough to finish with an 18-14 record, but the Cards declined an invitation to the NIT. UK faced its own late-season struggles and lost in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

Louisville sophomore Kenny Payne was in the starting lineup for this game. He finished with seven points in his second of three losses to the Wildcats as a player before getting his only win two years later.

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