The new Associated Press Top 25 college basketball rankings were released Monday, and the Kentucky Wildcats — for the fourth consecutive week — did not make the list.
UK does appear to be regaining some of its standing, however.
The Cats will take a three-game winning streak into this week’s games — at Vanderbilt on Tuesday night; home against Kansas on Saturday night — and they’re slowly inching their way back into the national picture following an unexpectedly mediocre start to the 2022-23 season.
The No. 4 team in the preseason Top 25 poll, Kentucky dropped out of the rankings altogether in the Jan. 2 update following a road loss to Missouri a few days earlier. The next week — after a blowout loss at Alabama — the Wildcats didn’t receive a single vote in the AP poll.
Kentucky picked up a total of three points in Monday’s update. The Cats are 39th in the voting and were mentioned by two voters, with Steve Greenberg of the Chicago Sun-Times putting them at No. 24 and Mike Rodak of AL.com placing Kentucky at No. 25.
Of course, the bigger concern for the Cats at this point isn’t where they’re ranked nationally but where they’ll be slotted for the NCAA Tournament. And if they’ll make March Madness at all.
Kentucky’s stunning home loss to lowly South Carolina two weeks ago led to the Wildcats being booted completely from most bracketology updates, and the team’s win at then-No. 5 Tennessee four days later didn’t move the needle much from a postseason projections standpoint. (That’s how bad that loss to the Gamecocks was.)
Now that UK has strung together three wins in a row — at Tennessee, then Georgia and Texas A&M at home — the Cats are re-emerging on bracketology boards. But just barely.
New projections Monday from longtime NCAA prognostication websites Bracketville and BracketWag.com place Kentucky at the tail end of the at-large seed list. BracketWag.com has the Cats as an 11 seed, while Bracketville projects Kentucky as a 12 seed. In both cases, UK is viewed as one of the “last four in” the NCAA Tournament — a scenario that would force John Calipari’s team to play one of the First Four games in Dayton before advancing to a spot in the NCAA Tournament round of 64 later that week.
BracketWag.com has UK as the second-to-last team in the field. Bracketville has the Wildcats landing the very last at-large spot.
So, Kentucky rolls into the final few weeks of the regular season with little room for error but lots of opportunities to boost its national profile. UK has just a 1-5 record in “Quad 1” games — the toughest on the schedule, according to the NCAA’s current principles — but the Cats still have seven such games remaining in the regular season, including Saturday’s matchup with Kansas in Rupp Arena. The victory at Tennessee is a major plus for UK’s tournament profile, and picking up some wins in those upcoming Quad 1 games would further boost the Cats’ standing.
Purdue returned to the No. 1 spot in Monday’s AP poll, picking up 39 of the 62 first-place votes. Alabama is now No. 2 and received the other 23 first-place votes. Houston dropped from No. 1 to No. 3 following a loss to Temple on Sunday, and No. 4 Tennessee and No. 5 Kansas State rounded out the top five.
No. 15 Auburn was the only other Southeastern Conference team in the new Top 25.
Both of the bracketology websites reference previously have Alabama, Kansas and Purdue as 1 seeds, while Bracketville pegs Arizona as its fourth 1 seed and BracketWag.com gives that spot to Kansas State. Tennessee is a 2 seed on both lists.
Selection Sunday is set for March 12.
