National rankings for next basketball season are already posted. Where is Kentucky?
Less than 12 hours removed from Baylor’s victory in the national championship game and the end of the 2020-21 college basketball season, several major sports media outlets had already posted their rankings for next season.
And it’s clear that, nationally, Kentucky is expected to be right back in the thick of things.
All of the national basketball websites that posted 2021-22 rankings Tuesday morning had the Wildcats ranked among the top 20 teams in the country, even with the team just weeks removed from a 9-16 season and once again undergoing a substantial amount of roster turnover.
USA Today’s early rankings have Kentucky sitting in the No. 9 spot nationally, noting the arrivals of instant-impact transfers Kellan Grady and Oscar Tshiebwe to go along with one of the best recruiting classes in the country.
247Sports’ rankings placed Kentucky as the No. 13 team in the country for next season. That site’s write-up specifically noted to keep an eye on former Minnesota point guard Marcus Carr, one of the top possible transfers this offseason and a player that has been closely linked to the Wildcats in recent days. Carr is looking at his NBA Draft possibilities first, but — if he comes back to college — UK appears to be a major player, and he’d fill a big area of need for John Calipari’s team.
CBS Sports national writer Gary Parrish placed the Cats just one spot further down the list at No. 14 overall. Parrish went so far as to put undecided UK sophomore forward Keion Brooks in the “expected return” category. Getting Brooks back would indeed be a major plus for the Cats. The Athletic also put UK at No. 14 nationally with Brooks in its “top returnees” section.
National college basketball writer Jeff Goodman had Kentucky at No. 15 in his rankings for the Stadium sports website.
The Washington Post ranked Kentucky at No. 17 nationally and also assumed the return of Davion Mintz, the team’s leading scorer and three-pointer shooter from this past season. The Sporting News also placed Kentucky at No. 17.
UK was placed at No. 19 in the Sports Illustrated rankings, with a note that incoming point guard Nolan Hickman might be the team’s “most important” addition for next season: “A McDonald’s All-American who could step in at the point guard position after UK struggled mightily there all season.”
The sports wagering site, SportsBetting.ag, also has the Wildcats positioned highly going into this offseason. That outfit released odds Tuesday morning showing Kentucky at 18-1 to win the national title a year from now. Those might seem like long odds, but UK is actually tied for the 11th-shortest odds on what looks to be a fairly wide-open list.
Gonzaga — runner-up in Monday night’s championship game following a previously undefeated season — is the NCAA title favorite on that odds sheet for next year at 9-1. The Zags also placed first in the early 2021-22 rankings from ESPN, Sports Illustrated, the Sporting News, the Athletic and Goodman, with CBS Sports putting Gonzaga in the No. 2 spot behind top-ranked UCLA. The Washington Post ranked Alabama at No. 1 and Gonzaga at No. 2. USA Today has UCLA and Duke in the first two spots, with Gonzaga at No. 3.
The national sites also expect Kentucky to be among the best teams in the Southeastern Conference one again. Most of the rankings had Alabama placed higher — and the Tide were 16-1 to win the title on the early SportsBetting.ag odds sheet — but Kentucky was the next SEC team in line in most of the early rankings. (Goodman put Arkansas in 14th, one spot above the Cats; the Post put Arkansas at No. 10; the Sporting News actually didn’t have Alabama in its Top 25 at all, putting Tennessee as the top SEC team at No. 16, one spot ahead of Kentucky).
It’s become a tradition of sorts for national outlets to post these Top 25 rankings for the following season shortly after the NCAA title game, always with the qualifier that it’s “way too early” for such lists to be out there.
That’ll be the case even more this year, with the rosters of the most of the teams in these Top 25s still unsettled, more than 1,000 players (and counting) in the NCAA transfer portal, and a later-than-usual NBA Draft calendar that will surely result in some later-than-usual stay-or-go decisions for some game-changing college basketball players.
So, don’t take these lists too seriously just yet. There’s still much to play out for many of the programs in these rankings, and that process is expected to last well into the summer.
These early Top 25s are a good snapshot of expectations at the moment, however. And it’s clear that Kentucky — despite coming off a 9-16 season and losing multiple NBA Draft picks — will once again be expected to compete with the nation’s best next season.
This story was originally published April 6, 2021 at 9:36 AM.
