Kentucky basketball gets zero support in new Top 25 rankings after blowout loss at Alabama
No surprise here: Kentucky’s support in the Associated Press Top 25 college basketball rankings has disappeared.
The Wildcats, already unranked, plummeted in the latest poll, going from 29th in the voting to unlisted when the new top 25 was released Monday afternoon. Kentucky defeated Louisiana State — previously 26th in the voting — in Rupp Arena last Tuesday night, but the Cats lost by 26 points at Alabama on Saturday, dropping their record to 10-5 and marking their fourth double-digit defeat of the 2022-23 season.
UK fell out of the top 25 last week for the first time this season following a 14-point loss at Missouri. The Cats now have ample work ahead of them just to get back into the rankings conversation.
Purdue’s four-week reign at the top of the poll ended with the Boilermakers’ first loss of the season — a 65-64 home defeat to Rutgers — and Matt Painter’s team dropped from No. 1 to No. 3 in the new rankings.
Houston (16-1) returned to the No. 1 spot in the AP poll. The Cougars’ only loss so far this season was to Alabama on Dec. 10. Kansas (14-1) is now No. 2 in the poll, with the Jayhawks’ lone defeat coming against Tennessee on Nov. 25.
No. 3 Purdue, No. 4 Alabama and No. 5 Tennessee round out the top five.
That Alabama and Tennessee are responsible for the nation’s top two teams’ only losses of the season shows just how tough of a stretch this is for a reeling Kentucky squad. Bama, of course, blasted UK by 26 points in Tuscaloosa over the weekend. The Cats finish this week with a trip to Knoxville for a Saturday afternoon matchup.
And these are clearly the top two teams in the Southeastern Conference.
Alabama (13-2) moved from No. 7 to No. 4 in the new rankings after blowout wins over Mississippi (84-62) and Kentucky (78-52) last week. Tennessee went from No. 8 to No. 5 after routs of Mississippi State (87-53) and South Carolina (85-42) last week.
The SEC’s other ranked teams are No. 15 Arkansas, No. 20 Missouri and No. 21 Auburn. Mississippi State (35th in the voting) and LSU (40th) were also listed.
Last week, UK was mentioned on 15 of the 61 ballots for the top-25 rankings, coming in as high as No. 19 nationally on one of them. On Monday, the Cats didn’t get a single vote. In total, 43 teams landed on at least one ballot.
Kentucky will start this week with a game against South Carolina — rated as the SEC’s worst team — Tuesday night in Rupp Arena. UK will be heavily favored in that contest.
The Cats have some opportunities to regain momentum in the coming weeks. Six of their next eight games are against unranked opponents, but there are two big ones in there — at Tennessee on Saturday and Kansas in Rupp on Jan. 28 — that will be difficult to manage.
Kentucky enters this week at No. 46 in the NCAA’s NET rankings, and the Wildcats — now 0-4 against NCAA “Quad 1” opponents — are likely to be a bubble team in the next wave of bracketology projections for this year’s tournament.
This story was originally published January 9, 2023 at 12:04 PM.
