Kentucky vs. Arkansas was ESPN's most-watched college basketball game this season

Kentucky basketball's big win at Arkansas on Saturday had a lot of eyes on it. According to ESPN PR, the Kentucky vs. Arkansas game this past weekend was ESPN's most-watched game of the college basketball season so far, totaling 2.4 million viewers. For reference, Kansas-BYU had 2.1 million people tuning in.

It's safe to say the Kentucky brand is still very high despite going into that game unranked and having a very up-and-down season so far. That was a game with very high stakes for the Wildcats, as not only was it against a top-15 Arkansas team, but it was coming off of a 25-point embarrassing loss to Vandy earlier in the week. Obviously, the John Calipari-Kentucky factor had a part in the ratings being high, but the matchup itself being that high in veiwership is very telling. Kentucky has everyone's attention with how they responded in that game, plus it was a very chippy night in Fayetteville.

Big matchups delivered big numbers!

This past week, ESPN networks accounted for 6 of the top 7 #NCAAMBB games, highlighted by:

🏀 @KentuckyMBB–@RazorbackMBB: 2.4M viewers⁰🏀 @BYUMBB–@KUHoops: 2.1M viewers⁰🏀 @AlabamaMBB–@GatorsMBK: 1.6M viewers pic.twitter.com/myXCo8zsDO
— ESPN PR (@ESPNPR) February 4, 2026

Primetime ESPN never does Kentucky basketball bad and when you add in the fact that it was Calipari's second game against his former school with it also being a very surprising result to college basketball as a whole, especially when the Wildcats started out strong in the hostile road environment, people want to tune in more.

After that game, Kentucky coach Mark Pope talked about what went into his team silencing all of the doubters and coming away with their biggest win of the season. Turns out, they actually tweaked their usual pregame routine for road games when they arrived in Fayetteville.

"They changed some of our routine. In practice, the last two days, we had a huge emphasis on the first four, six minutes of a scrimmage each day," Pope said on Saturday following Kentucky's eight-point win against Arkansas. "And the guys really worked. It's hard in practice to simulate the intensity of game, but these guys really tried to do that. It really came from our team and our staff of figuring out a better way to approach this. And it doesn't guarantee that we're not gonna have slow starts, but it certainly was credit to our guys for being ready to go from the tip tonight, I thought they were terrific."

Kentucky certainly had plenty of people watching the incredible way they responded on Saturday night, good enough for the most-watched college basketball game of the season so far.