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The Kentucky Wildcats jumped up one spot to No. 2 in NCAA College Basketball rankings, as the Kansas Jayhawks moved up to the No. 1 position.

As we head into the conference championships and get deeper into March Madness, let’s take a look back at the Wildcats’ proud history.

The Kentucky Wildcats belong to the University of Kentucky and are a NCAA Division 1 team from Lexington, KY.  They play in the Southeastern Conference and adopted the name “Wildcats” in the 1990’s.

The basketball program officially started for this school back in 1902 as started as a women’s sport.  The men’s team was added one year later in 1903.  In 1930, Adolph Rupp was hired as the head coach and would actually end up coaching the team for 40 years until 1972 when he retired.  During this 40 year coaching span, he led the Kentucky Wildcats to four NCAA crowns in the years of 1948, 1949, 1951, and 1958.

The Wildcats also one a fifth championship under the coach Joe B. Hall in 1978, and another championship for the NCAA in 1996 under Rick Pitino, and in 1998 with Orlando “Tubby” Smith.

A brand new stadium named the Joe Craft Center was unveiled in 2007 and cost the school nearly thirty million dollars to create the new state-of-the-art basketball stadium.  With this new stadium the men’s basketball team is considered to be one of the best schools in the nation with their decorated history in college basketball titles.

Kentucky leads all NCAA basketball teams in all-time winning percentage which turns out to be (.760) and have an all time record of 2013-636.  With a total of seven NCAA Men’s Division 1 Basketball Championships, they are second only to UCLA’s eleven championships.  The men’s program has also won 43 SEC regular season titles.