This is the most important week of Kentucky’s basketball season. What happens next?
It’s not hyperbole. This is the most important week of this Kentucky basketball season.
The reeling Wildcats are losers of two in a row and owners of an NCAA Tournament résumé that would almost certainly have them watching March Madness from home.
UK’s 15-point home loss to Arkansas last Tuesday night ended the Cats’ six-game winning streak in conference play and put them squarely on the bubble — but still just barely in the NCAA field — in the eyes of most bracketologists. And then came Saturday’s loss to Georgia — the Southeastern Conference’s 11th-best team, according to the NCAA’s NET ratings — in a game that Kentucky led for a total of three minutes and 44 seconds.
That defeat dropped UK to 16-9 on the season and 7-5 in the SEC, a league with only two teams in the Associated Press Top 25. The loss also dropped the Cats out of the prognosticators’ NCAA Tournament field. For now, at least.
There’s still time to change that fate, and Kentucky will get no better chance to turn things around than this week.
“We don’t have those type of guys that throw in the towel, let go of the rope,” freshman Chris Livingston said just minutes after the Georgia loss. “Obviously, it does look tough. It looks bad right now. But just how we went into Tennessee and beat them at home — our backs were against the wall. Everybody was against us and counted us out. So that’s the mentality we gotta roll with for the rest of the season. And understand where we’re at. And be realistic with the situation.”
The situation is this: the Cats have six games remaining in their regular season. At least four of those matchups will go down as Quad 1 games, the toughest a team can play and an important tool for the NCAA Tournament decision-makers in the run-up to Selection Sunday.
As of now, Kentucky is 1-7 in such games. The Cats need wins, and they need them now.
Of the final three weeks of the season, this is the only one that features two guaranteed Quad 1 games. And these two games are arguably the most winnable of the four locked-in Quad 1s left on UK’s schedule.
The rest of that schedule reads like this …
This week: at Mississippi State on Wednesday; then Tennessee in Rupp Arena on Saturday. Both of these games are basically guaranteed to stay in the Quad 1 category, no matter what happens the rest of the season.
Next week: at Florida on Wednesday; then Auburn at home that Saturday. The Gators on the road will remain a Quad 1 game regardless of future results. The Auburn matchup could be a Quad 1 by Selection Sunday, but it’s currently a Quad 2. (The Tigers need to finish in the top 30 in the NET to push this into the Quad 1 zone. They started this week at No. 35.)
The final week of the regular season: Vanderbilt at home and a trip to Arkansas. The Vandy game is almost certain to be Quad 3, while the trip to Fayetteville will go down as a Quad 1 contest.
What happens between now and Saturday afternoon will set the tone for the rest of UK’s regular season, and there’s little margin for error for these Wildcats to make the 68-team field.
“We have all kind of games left that we can go do what we need to do,” John Calipari said after Saturday’s loss. “… All right, we got our chance to do whatever we choose to do.”
Kentucky’s next two games
It starts in Starkville against a Mississippi State team that began the season with an 11-0 record, then started 1-7 in the SEC and has since won five straight games, including Saturday’s 70-64 victory at Arkansas (the same team that beat UK by 15 in Rupp a week ago).
The Bulldogs are creeping up on the NCAA Tournament bubble themselves after that horrendous start to league play, and they’ll obviously be looking to keep the winning streak alive Wednesday night.
Putting an end to that heater would be big for Kentucky. A third straight loss — something that UK hasn’t endured all season — might put the Cats in a situation where they’d need to win out to have a good chance to make the NCAA Tournament.
After that, Tennessee comes to Lexington, and the Volunteers will be looking for revenge after UK shocked them in Knoxville last month. The Cats’ season had hit rock bottom just a few days before that game — in the form of a stunning loss to lowly South Carolina in Rupp Arena — and the win over UT vaulted Kentucky to a four-game winning streak.
The Vols could be a dangerous, desperate bunch when they arrive in town. They’ve lost their last two games — to Vanderbilt and Missouri — on three-pointers at the buzzer, and before they come to Lexington, they’ll first have to play Alabama (the only unbeaten team in SEC play) on Wednesday night. So they could very well walk into Rupp on a three-game losing skid.
To feel good about their NCAA Tournament outlook, the Wildcats need to win two this week. More chances will come, but losing even one of these next two games basically eliminates UK’s margin for error down the stretch. (And that regular-season finale at Arkansas is rated as the Cats’ toughest remaining test.)
If the Cats lose both this week — and drop to 1-9 in Quad 1 games — they might need to win the SEC Tournament to make it to March Madness, and the likelihood of that is looking slim.
After Saturday’s loss to Georgia, the UK players said the locker room was still together. “We’re a really strong group, and we’re gonna get through this,” Livingston declared.
The day before that loss, senior forward Jacob Toppin implied that he still thinks this will ultimately be a special season. “We make it to the NCAA Tournament, you’ll see what happens,” he promised, before adding a caveat. “But, obviously, we have to get there.”
There’s only one way to do that. And time is running out. And these Cats know it.
“We have to start winning games,” Toppin said.
Next game
Kentucky at Mississippi State
When: 8:30 p.m. EST Wednesday
TV: SEC Network
Radio: WLAP-AM 630, WBUL-FM 98.1
Records: Kentucky 16-9 (7-5 SEC), Mississippi State 17-8 (5-7)
Series: Kentucky leads 100-21
Last meeting: Kentucky won 82-74 in overtime on Jan. 25, 2022, in Lexington
This story was originally published February 13, 2023 at 6:30 AM.
