The University of Kentucky men’s basketball team defeated Florida University on Saturday 67-50 to finish their regular season undefeated and move to 31-0. 

This marks the second time in program history that the team has gone undefeated in the regular season—after the Wildcats won every game in their 1953 to ’54 campaign—and the first time that a team from a major conference finished the regular season undefeated since the 1975 to ’76 Indiana Hoosiers. 

The win on Saturday capped a dominant campaign for the Wildcats that included intense scrutiny from the first game of the season, when they defeated Grand Canyon University by 40 points. 

From speculation about the NBA potential of the team’s star forwards Karl-Anthony Towns and Willie Cauley-Stein to comparisons to all-time great college basketball programs, the Wildcats overcame the pressure of consistent astronomical expectations to finish the season undefeated. 

The Wildcats steamrolled through the rest of the first half of their schedule by beating fifth-ranked University of Kansas by 32, Montana State University by 58 and sixth-ranked University of Texas at Austin by 12. They hit their first legitimate roadblock of the season in the beginning of the new year, going into overtime against unranked University of Mississippi and double overtime against unranked Texas A&M University in back-to-back games. 

Regardless, Kentucky came away with the wins by a combined total of nine points.

In a sloppily played game against Louisiana State University on Feb. 10, the Wildcats faced their last real test of the season. 

The team was called for a technical foul after Towns hung on the basket, much to the dismay of head coach John Calipari, who said, “I hope we lose. Watch this,” shortly after the technical was assessed. Towns came back to redeem himself with a jump-hook that gave Kentucky the lead in the final minutes of the game. Kentucky held on for the 71-69 victory, and Calipari had some warm words for his star player. 

“I’m proud of Karl because he came back and grew up,”  Calipari said after the game.

Kentucky continued on to win six of their last seven games by double digits, finishing the season largely without a blemish on their record. The team has improved over time, as Towns and Cauley-Stein have developed a chemistry working together to become the team’s enforcers on defense in the paint. 

The pair is the defensive anchor of the team, and a large reason that Kentucky is ranked first in the nation in opponents’ field goal percentage at 35.1 percent. 

Immediately after the victory over Florida, the Wildcats wore shirts adorned with their undefeated record and the words “NOT DONE YET,” signaling to the world that the team’s work was just getting started, with March Madness right around the corner in the next week. 

Inevitably, this Kentucky team will have to be compared to other undefeated teams in college basketball history. This comparison will rely heavily on how far the Wildcats make it into the postseason, but there is an argument to be made that this group is the strongest of the bunch. After the Hoosiers won all of their games in 1976, going undefeated became progressively harder. 

The introduction of the three-point line, the emergence of the “one-and-done” players and the expansion of the NCAA Tournament bracket have all helped in leveling the playing field and making a historic run much more difficult today. 

If Kentucky can manage to win the NCAA championship, they will have to be mentioned amongst one of the greatest teams in the history of college basketball.