How Kentucky Basketball Stacks Up With Five Weeks Left in the Regular Season
LEXINGTON, Ky. — The college basketball season is already swiftly on the back nine, though the opening day of games on Nov. 7 feels like it was just a few weeks ago. Kentucky basketball has just 10 games left in the regular season, ending in Fayetteville on March 4 in a road tilt against Arkansas.
The SEC Tournament will run from March 8-12, with the final day also serving as Selection Sunday — a day that may have Big Blue Nation at the edge of its seat, based off current NCAA Tournament projections.
UK's 77-68 loss to the Kansas Jayhawks over the weekend in Lexington was far from a poor defeat, but it did no favors in helping the Wildcats climb off of the tourney bubble.
ESPN's Joe Lunardi moved Kentucky back into the "Last Four In" category after the loss to the Jayhawks on Saturday, demoting the Cats from being one of the last four teams to receive a bye and avoid playing in the First Four games in Dayton:
CBS Sports' Jerry Palm agrees, noting that the loss to KU "almost" knocked Kentucky out of the 68-team field. He has the Cats in Dayton, taking on an aforementioned team that they'll play two times in the final 10 games of the season — Arkansas.
"Kentucky is now 1-6 vs Quad 1 opposition, with that win at Tennessee saving them for now. It is the only one the Wildcats have over a team in the updated bracket," Palm wrote.
Palm's updated bracket has UK and the Razorbacks squaring off for the right to play as an 11-seed against the surging New Mexico Lobos, coached by Richard Pitino, the son of former Kentucky coach Rick.
The winner of that 6-11 matchup is projected to play the winner of 3-seeded Virginia and the 14-seed Furman Paladins out of the Southern Conference. Palm projects those first weekend matchups in the West Region (Arizona as the No. 1 seed) to take place in Greensboro, N.C., with the winner heading out to Las Vegas for the Sweet 16 and Elite Eight.
Palm's bracket can be found here.
Kentucky will begin its crucial 10-game stretch with a 5-3 SEC record, good enough for a fifth-place tie in the conference standings as of Jan. 30:
- 1. Alabama (8-0)
- T2. Tennessee, Texas A&M (7-1)
- 4. Auburn (6-2)
- T5. Kentucky, Florida (5-3)
- T7. Missouri, Georgia (4-4)
- T9. Arkansas, Vanderbilt (3-5)
- T11. Mississippi State, LSU, Ole Miss, South Carolina (1-7)
Of the 14 teams in the conference, just three were ranked in the latest AP Poll:
- No. 2 Tennessee
- No. 4 Alabama
- No. 25 Auburn
Additionally, just three other teams received votes in the poll, with Kentucky not being one of them. Missouri is right behind Auburn at No. 26, while Texas A&M (36) and Arkansas (39) round out what's been a disappointing stretch for the conference.
The SEC was dominated by the Big 12 over the weekend, as the latter crushed the former 7-3 in the 10 games played in the final rendition of the challenge between the two conferences:
- No. 15 Auburn 77, West Virginia 80
- No. 2 Alabama 69, Oklahoma 93
- No. 12 Iowa State 61, Missouri 78
- Texas Tech 76, LSU 68
- No. 11 TCU 74, Mississippi State 81 — Overtime
- Arkansas 64, No. 17 Baylor 67
- No. 10 Texas 71, No. 4 Tennessee 82
- Florida 50, No. 5 Kansas State 64
- No. 9 Kansas 77, Kentucky 68
- Ole Miss 60, Oklahoma State 82
Moving into the first week of February, here's how all 14 SEC teams stack up in the updated NET Rankings:
- No. 2 Tennessee
- No. 4 Alabama
- No. 28 Arkansas
- No. 31 Auburn
- No. 36 Kentucky
- No. 42 Texas A&M
- No. 44 Missouri
- No. 50 Florida
- No. 54 Mississippi State
- No. 93 Vanderbilt
- No. 112 Georgia
- No. 114 Ole Miss
- No. 137 LSU
- No. 272 South Carolina
When analyzing Kentucky's NCAA Tournament résumé, it doesn't take very long to notice the good and the bad.
The good? A road win over the NET No. 2 team in the country.
The bad? A home loss to the NET No. 272 team in the country.
Presume that those games somewhat cancel each other out, and there's not much else to say when looking at what the Wildcats have accomplished this season.
- Q1 record: 1-6
- Q2 record: 3-0
- Q3 record: 4-0
- Q4 record: 6-1
Kentucky has no other wins over Quad 1 opponents besides Tennessee, losing all six of its other opportunities. A 7-0 record against Quad 2 and 3 opponents is great, but when you can't win the big games, beating the slightly above average teams loses its luster. It's good, but not good enough.
The good news is this: Half of UK's remaining games are currently slated to be opportunities for Quad 1 wins:
Quad 1 games
- Arkansas - Feb. 7
- @ Mississippi State - Feb. 15
- Tennessee - Feb. 18
- @ Florida - Feb. 22
- @ Arkansas - March 4
Quad 2 games
- @ Ole Miss - Jan. 31
- Florida - Feb. 4
- @ Georgia - Feb. 11
- Auburn - Feb. 25
Quad 3 games
- Vanderbilt - March 1
Auburn's NET ranking of 31 means it is just outside of a Quad 1 game for Kentucky, so the opportunity for that matchup to be bumped up is dependent on the Tigers, but is highly possible.
The chances are there for John Calipari's team to bolster their résumé and — at the very least — avoid playing in Dayton and avoid playing in the tournament with a double-digit seed next to its name. Making March Madness is obviously still not a guarantee, however.
BartTorvik.com, an analytics site that is much lower on Kentucky — currently ranked 63rd — predicts that the Wildcats will finish the 10-game stretch with a 5-5 record, losing both matchups to Arkansas, the away matchups at Mississippi State and Florida, as well as the home rematch against Tennessee. If UK were to finish with an 18-13 (9-9 SEC) record, that likely means a trip to the NIT instead of the Big Dance. Torvik currently gives the Wildcats a 43.1 percent chance to make the tournament.
While Kentucky's four-game winning streak provided more than a glimmer of hope that the season was on the up-and-up, it still doesn't cast that safety net away from the bubble. A win over the Jayhawks would've done just that, but star forward Jalen Wilson had other ideas.
Winning the SEC is not out of the equation for the Cats, but Alabama and Tennessee appear to be so far ahead of the rest of the pack, that it would likely take a meltdown from both potential one-seeds to result in UK swooping in at the end of the regular season. The main focus for Kentucky should be finishing in the top-four of the conference, so it would get a double-bye into the quarterfinals of the SEC Tournament.
The Wildcats' season once was lost, but now appears to be — somewhat — found. They now just need to take care of business down the stretch, in order to avoid needing some amazing grace to hear their name called on Selection Sunday.
It all starts with a road test on Tuesday evening in Oxford against the Ole Miss Rebels. A loss to one of the conference's bottom-feeders would induce panic, a feeling that BBN has become far-too familiar with since November.
More on Kentucky's loss to Kansas HERE.
Kentucky is leaving the KU loss with optimism. More HERE.
Everything John Calipari said after the defeat can be found HERE.
WATCH: Tshiebwe, Reeves and Toppin talk KU defeat.
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