‘Sad Kentucky Girl’ Goes Viral For Reaction To The Wildcats’ Embarrassing Loss To 14-Seed Oakland

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John Calipari’s were the first major upset of the 2024 NCAA Tournament, as the #3-seed Wildcats lost to #14-seed Oakland in the first round by a score of 80-76.

As is tradition when it comes to NCAA tournaments — remember the infamous Crying Northwestern Kid (who has now become a widely-used GIF), among many others — a fan of the losing team went viral for their reaction to the loss.

The NCAA’s cameramen certainly know what they’re doing, as they cut to an aggravated-looking young woman in the crowd as soon as the game clock hit zero.

Known as the Sad Kentucky Girl, a tweet asking “Watching Kentucky lose all by yourself queen?” has racked up over 3.5 million views at the time of this writing.

With their win over the Wildcats, Oakland will look to extend their Cinderella run when they take on #11-seed NC State this weekend.

Oakland’s upset over Kentucky was led by guard Jack Gohlke, who put up 32 points in the win.

Following the loss, Turner Sports analyst Jay Wright, the former national title-winning coach at Villanova, had some slight harsh comments about Coach Cal as he illustrated that the era of talented “one-and-dones” is over.

“The era of taking these young freshmen and trying to play against older players is over,” Wright said in his postgame analysis.

“I think he did a phenomenal job with these guys all year getting them to be as successful as they were. You can see they’re playing against grown men. The guys on Kentucky will be far better pros than any of these guys on Oakland or any of these guys in the tournament. But they’re not as good college basketball players,” he continued.

Wright went on to explain that because of NIL rules, players can stay in college longer, which will make it more difficult for young teams like Coach Cal’s to have success.