No matter what kind of roster John Calipari has trotted out on opening night of the previous 14 seasons as Kentucky’s coach, his Wildcats have always started out projected to be among the elite teams in college basketball.
It’s looking increasingly likely that will change in year 15 of the Calipari era.
The first wave of “way too early” rankings for the 2023-24 season hit immediately after the NCAA Tournament ended in April, and the Wildcats were right there near the top of just about every list. Back then, ESPN had UK at No. 4 in the country, several major outlets placed the Cats within the top 10, and nearly every national list ranked Kentucky as a top-15 team.
Two months later, UK’s stock has plummeted.
Of course, those initial rankings took into account that the Cats would be bringing in yet another No. 1-rated recruiting class, presumably to be bolstered by a number of veteran college players. Some of those early lists projected that Oscar Tshiebwe or Chris Livingston (or both) would be back. Pretty much every one of them assumed that Antonio Reeves would return. And, in this era of impact transfers, the logical thinking said that Kentucky would get one or two key additions from the portal.
Instead, Tshiebwe is gone. Livingston is gone. Reeves hasn’t confirmed what he’s doing next, and if he leaves Lexington it will mean that nine Wildcats from last season’s roster will have chosen not to return to Kentucky. Meanwhile, it’s the middle of June and no transfers have been added to UK’s program.
The result will be a historically young and inexperienced roster. As of now, Calipari has eight confirmed scholarship players for the 2023-24 season. Six are freshmen. Two are sophomores. Two more incoming freshmen — Somto Cyril and Joey Hart — are expected to join that group in the near future. Neither of those additions is likely to move the needle on Kentucky’s national status much at all. Nor did the signing of high school recruit Jordan Burks on Monday.
In fact, longtime national college basketball analyst Jeff Goodman updated his early 2023-24 rankings not long after Burks’ inevitable commitment became official, and he actually removed the Wildcats from his top 25 altogether. (UK was No. 25 on his previous list, following the final NBA Draft decisions from Tshiebwe, Livingston and Reeves.)
And while Goodman is, so far, in the minority by leaving Kentucky completely out of his national rankings, he might have a lot more company before too long.
Early college basketball rankings
ESPN’s most recent list has UK at No. 24, but that ranking includes Reeves in the projected starting lineup for next season. The senior guard — also the Cats’ leading backcourt scorer last season — continues to weigh his options without public comment.
CBS Sports’ Gary Parrish also had Kentucky at No. 25 immediately after the NBA Draft deadline of May 31, suggesting then that Calipari “has work to do in the transfer portal” if he wants to add any experience around his (presumably) star freshmen. Since that was written, Calipari has struck out on additional impact transfers — namely, Creighton’s Arthur Kaluma — and turned to Burks, Cyril and Hart to fill out his roster. There are few quality transfers remaining in the portal, and Kentucky does not appear to be a realistic landing spot for any of them.
On Monday night, Parrish updated his rankings again, moving UK outside of the top 25 and later commenting on Twitter that he did so, in part, because he expects the Cats to lose Reeves this offseason. (In Kentucky’s place, Parrish inserted St. John’s, now coached by Rick Pitino.)
The Athletic’s Seth Davis ranks UK at No. 25, too. He moved Reeves into the category of “projected departures” after the 22-year-old’s unorthodox decision to remove his name from the draft without immediately committing to return to Lexington for next season.
Sports Illustrated ranks Kentucky at No. 23 nationally. “Winning with youth is getting harder and harder, and the 2023 high school class is considered among the worst of the past two decades,” writes SI’s Kevin Sweeney. He’s correct on both counts.
NCAA.com’s Andy Katz paints the rosiest picture of UK’s upcoming season, placing the Wildcats at No. 18 in his early rankings. Even that comes with a warning. “The lack of veterans will haunt this team and probably prevent the Wildcats from winning a title,” Katz writes.
247Sports’ most recent 2023-24 rankings don’t include Kentucky at all.
And if you want to look even further into the college basketball future, ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi moved Kentucky down to an 8 seed in his latest NCAA Tournament projection last week. Such an outcome would set up another early exit in March, the last thing Calipari needs.
UK, of course, has not been to a Final Four since 2015 and hasn’t been beyond the first week of the NCAA Tournament in the past three years. The last time that happened, Billy Gillispie was coach.
Unless there’s a sudden and unexpected wave of experienced additions to Kentucky’s roster, the actual Associated Press preseason rankings in the fall are likely to match up pretty closely with the aforementioned lists, pegging UK as a back-end top-25 team, at best.
That would be a first in the Calipari era.
In the Hall of Fame coach’s 14 previous seasons here, Kentucky has started no worse than No. 11 nationally. (That was in 2010-11, ultimately a Final Four campaign for the Cats.)
UK started the season ranked No. 10 in both 2020-21 and 2021-22. The Cats went 9-16 in the first of those seasons and were upset in the first round of the NCAA Tournament as a 2 seed in the latter.
In Calipari’s other 11 seasons at Kentucky, the team has been ranked in the top five in every AP preseason poll. That includes last season, when the Cats started at No. 4 before skidding their way to a 6 seed, saved from missing the NCAA Tournament altogether by a late run of success. The NIT team of 2013 began the season ranked No. 3 nationally. The underwhelming Sweet Sixteen team of 2018 started at No. 5 in the AP poll.
Both of those squads were heavily reliant on five-star freshmen, as this one will be. And even if Reeves decides to return to Lexington, the vast majority of these 2023-24 lists appear set to have the Cats outside the top 20.
Of course, preseason rankings don’t matter one bit once the games begin. It’s quite possible that these young Wildcats jell terrifically on the court and live up to or even exceed the loftiest of individual expectations. It’s also possible that Kentucky takes the court against international competition at the GLOBL JAM in Canada next month and changes some of the opinions that say this roster needs more experience.
Whether either or both happens remains to be seen.
What’s clear now is that the national perception of Kentucky basketball is down. The lowest, in fact, it’s ever been with a new season approaching and Calipari at the helm. That doesn’t mean the Cats are doomed to relative mediocrity once real basketball begins in a few months. It just means that no one will be surprised if that’s what ultimately happens.
And that’s a switch from the first 14 years of the Calipari era.
