IU says series with Kentucky 'doomed'

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (WISH) - The classic college basketball rivalry between IU and UK is "doomed" despite IU's efforts to revive it, a letter from an IU athletics official says .

Earlier this month, Indiana University and the University of Kentucky announced that they were s uspending their series in basketball, due to a dispute over where the games should be played. The schools have met during the regular season every year since 1969.

A week later, according to the letter from Frederick Glass, IU vice president and director of intercollegiate athletics, IU tried to re-open negotiations with Kentucky about continuing the rivalry. The Hoosiers proposed two neutral site games at Lucas Oil Stadium, followed by two games at campus sites. That offer, Glass says in the letter, was in conflict with prior UK scheduling commitments, but there was still "a spirit of cooperation."

• ONLINE EXTRA | Read the letter

But Kentucky rejected that offer last week, according to the letter, so it appears that great rivalry is still off the schedule for the foreseeable future.

"Kentucky's refusal to consider anything other than a two-year, neutral-site-only, contract ... has doomed a series that should be bigger than that," Glass says in the letter.

Last year, the border-state rivals played two of the season's most memorable games -- Indiana's 73-72 win in Bloomington and a 102-90 shootout at the NCAA's regional semifinals in Atlanta, which served as a springboard for Kentucky's latest title run.

The Hoosiers and Wildcats also have met three other times in postseason play since 1969, all on neutral courts. Kentucky is 3-1 in the four postseason meetings.

These are two of the nation's most prestigious basketball schools. Both are ranked among the nation's top 15 programs in victories, with Kentucky topping the list. Only UCLA (11) has won more national titles than the Wildcats (eight) and those are the only two programs that have more championship banners than Indiana (five). North Carolina also has won five national titles.

The schools played four times from 1924 to 1928, then didn't meet again until 1940. After Indiana lost its second straight in the series, in 1944, the teams met only one other time (1965) before the series restarted in 1969.