Report: UK 'backed out' of UTEP rematch

The University of Kentucky has ended negotiations to play a 2016 game against UTEP, which Miners coach Tim Floyd had intended to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the national championship matchup between UK and the school formerly known as Texas Western.

Floyd, who originally announced the meeting as a possibility in October 2013, told NBC affiliate KTSM on Wednesday that UK "just backed out."

Neither school had yet to make an official announcement adding it to their schedules.

It was in the original game, also played at Maryland, that Texas Western started five black players for the first time in NCAA championship history and beat an all-white UK lineup coached by Adolph Rupp. The 2006 film "Glory Road" brought the story of coach Don Haskins' Texas Western team back to the forefront.

Floyd told KTSM.com that UK "said that there were a lot of people up there that didn't want the game to be played, for whatever reason, so I don't want to throw them completely under the bus, but that's OK.

"We'll just stay with a 1-0 record against the Kentucky Wildcats in college basketball. If they never want to play again and act like the game never happened, for the reasons why it occurred are significant, then we'll never play again."

Floyd said in 2013 he wanted to play at Cole Fieldhouse at the University of Maryland, site of the original game, and to potentially do so in Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

UK hasn't played a non-conference game during the Southeastern Conference portion of its schedule under coach John Calipari.

Wildcats team spokespersn Eric Lindsey clarified in an email Thursday morning that, "We didn't back out of anything because we never agreed to play the game. There were discussions about the possibility of playing, but they never materialized past that. It just didn't work out. Next year our schedule is pretty set as far as games away from home.

"We're still looking for a couple of games at home, but we didn't have room in the schedule for what we had discussed earlier. We would be open to playing them in future seasons."