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Skinner Reaches 500 Wins at Kentucky
Every one of them came in the same job, and Kentucky says that makes him the second SEC coach to win 500 at one school, after Florida's Mary Wise.
No. 3 Kentucky swept South Florida 3-0 (25-18, 25-16, 25-19) on Saturday night at Historic Memorial Coliseum, and by Kentucky's count the result gave Craig Skinner his 500th career victory, all of them at Kentucky.
He was hired in December 2004, out of an assistant's job at Nebraska, to take over a programme he says was at the bottom. His first season was 2005 and this is his 22nd.
The distance between those two facts is the whole story, and Skinner measured it himself rather than leaving it to a record book. Craig Skinner, Kentucky head coach, spoke to Tim Letcher of UK Athletics after Saturday's win.
No, not even close. Megan and I left Nebraska to come here and it was, well, here we go. They're at the bottom, let's see what we can do. And, in three to five years, let's see if we can get out of there.
Three Wins Since 497 Make 500
The 500 figure comes from Kentucky, and the check on it is arithmetic anybody can do with two dates and a schedule page. Here it is.
Skinner finished the 2025 season with 497 wins, three short of 500, per Drew Franklin of On3 on 21 August. Kentucky's coach bio, modified in January, gives the same 497-157.
The Wildcats have won three matches since, over Wisconsin on 21 August, Utah State on 28 August and South Florida on Saturday, that last one confirmed from the other side of the net per South Florida athletics.
Four hundred and ninety-seven plus three is 500, and the last of the three is confirmed by an institution with no stake in Kentucky's milestone, which is as close to independent corroboration as this number gets.
We are not printing a career record of 500-158 anywhere on this page. No source publishes that line, the addition is ours, and a loss column is not ours to assert.
Five hundred wins across 22 seasons averages better than 22 a year, which is a full season of winning repeated 22 times over. Kentucky is 3-1 in the current one and has not yet played a September match.
Five Hundred Wins, One Head Coaching Job
Skinner's résumé before Lexington is entirely assistant work. Five seasons at Nebraska under John Cook, three at Wisconsin under Cook from 1994 to 1996, and two at Ball State between those jobs.
Kentucky was his first head coaching job and it remains his only one, which is why the 500th career win and the 500th Kentucky win are the same match on the same night.
Kentucky's unbylined match report of 29 August does not stop at the programme record, and the sentence it writes past that one into is the one worth reproducing whole.
Skinner, who is in his 22nd season at Kentucky, has won more matches than any head coach in program history. The native of Muncie, Indiana who took the helm of Kentucky Volleyball in 2005 has led Kentucky to nine-straight Southeastern Conference championships and becomes the second coach in SEC history to win 500 matches at one school, joining Florida's Mary Wise.
The Roster That Reached a Final Returned
Kentucky won the 2020 national championship and has taken nine straight Southeastern Conference titles, per its release. The bio dates his passing of the previous programme record to 2014 and his 211th win.
Last season ended one match short. Kentucky beat Wisconsin 3-2 in the national semifinal, lost the championship match to Texas A&M and finished 30-3, then raised the 2025 NCAA National Runner Up banner on Friday night.
It was the seventh national title match between two teams from the same conference. Kentucky went in as a No. 1 seed and the No. 2 overall, having beaten Texas A&M 3-1 in College Station the previous October.
Nearly all of that team came back. Eva Hudson is the lone departure from the 2025 roster, per On3, which means the 500th win was collected by a group that had already been to a final together.
Former Opponents Sent Him Video Tributes
Kentucky honoured him after the sweep was over. A tribute video ran on the board inside Historic Memorial Coliseum carrying former players, former opposing coaches, his family and other dignitaries, all of it assembled for one man.
A coach who has won 500 matches gets credited for the wins, and the thing his own players reach for first is not one of them. Lizzie Carr, who hit .421 with 10 kills in the sweep, per Tim Letcher of UK Athletics.
It's very clear why he has been as successful as he is. He's a great figure and he cares about us so much as people, then volleyball comes after that. And that's not found everywhere in college sports.
Nothing About This Season Is Ceremonial
The 500th arrived in a week that was not built for ceremony. Kentucky opened against No. 6 Wisconsin at Fiserv Forum on 21 August, a rematch of the 2025 national semifinal, and won it 3-0.
Two days later No. 4 Pittsburgh beat the Wildcats 3-1 in the same building. Kentucky is 3-1, and the two exhibitions on its schedule page against Ohio and Dayton are not part of that.
South Florida fell to 0-2 in Lexington, a night after Eastern Kentucky beat them 3-2 in the same event, which means the 500th arrived against a team still looking for its first win.
Twenty-two years on, the bottom looks like a season opener against the No. 6 and No. 4 teams in the country and a home crowd assembled to watch a video about him.
Kentucky hit .380 against Wisconsin on opening night and .277 against a team that has still not won a match. UCLA arrives in Lexington on Wednesday, and the second of those two numbers is the one that should worry Kentucky.
