Where did Kentucky basketball land in the new Top 25 rankings after another wild week?
It was another wildly uneven week of basketball for the Kentucky Wildcats.
What did it mean for their standing on the national scene?
UK moved up one spot in the new Associated Press Top 25 poll Monday afternoon, coming away with the No. 16 ranking following a week in which they suffered a buzzer-beating loss at LSU and then bounced back to run then-No. 13 Alabama out of Rupp Arena in a 22-point victory that wasn’t nearly that close.
The Wildcats (19-8, 9-5 SEC) have just four games remaining in the regular season, starting with a trip to Mississippi State on Tuesday night. They’ll finish the week with a game back in Rupp Arena against the Arkansas Razorbacks on Saturday afternoon.
This was the second consecutive week that Kentucky made a positive move in the polls after dropping to a season-low No. 22 two weeks ago. The Cats have been ranked as high as No. 6 in the country in three separate AP polls this season — all of those coming in the month of January.
Two AP voters had Kentucky at No. 10 in the new rankings — the highest mark for the Cats in this week’s poll — and 33 voters placed UK among the top 15 teams in the country. No one had Kentucky higher than 13th last week. Only one voter didn’t rank the Wildcats at all this week, and 60 of 62 ballots had them inside the top 20.
Houston took over the No. 1 spot in the rankings Monday following a six-week stay in the top spot by UConn, which had its 14-game winning streak snapped with an 85-66 loss at Creighton last week. Purdue is now No. 2 in the rankings, followed by the Huskies at No. 3, then Tennessee at No. 4 and Marquette at No. 5.
Rounding out the top 10 in the new rankings: No. 6 Arizona, No. 7 Kansas, No. 8 Iowa State, No. 9 North Carolina and No. 10 Duke.
Houston took 53 of 62 first-place votes this week, with Purdue getting four and UConn retaining the other five.
The SEC has six teams in the Top 25 this week: Tennessee in the No. 4 spot, followed by No. 11 Auburn, No. 14 Alabama, No. 16 Kentucky, No. 18 South Carolina and No. 24 Florida. The Crimson Tide dropped one spot following their lopsided loss to UK over the weekend.
UK’s next opponent, Mississippi State, was the only SEC team in the “also receiving votes” tier of the new poll. The Bulldogs (19-8, 8-6 SEC) were 39th in this week’s voting.
Alabama and Tennessee are tied at the top of the SEC standings with 11-3 league records, followed by Auburn and South Carolina at 10-4, and then Kentucky and Florida at 9-5.
Kentucky’s bracketology outlook
Selection Sunday is just three weeks away, and Kentucky enjoyed positive movement last week despite that loss at LSU.
The Wildcats start this week at No. 19 in the NET ratings — an important metric for the NCAA Tournament selection committee — up two spots from the beginning of last week. The win over Alabama moved UK to 5-5 in Quad 1 games — the toughest on a team’s schedule, according to the NCAA’s formula — and Tuesday night’s trip to Mississippi State will be another opportunity to pick up a Quad 1 victory. The only other such game left on UK’s regular-season schedule is the finale at Tennessee on March 9.
Kentucky had not been in the top 20 of the NET ratings since Jan. 23, the day the Cats lost by 17 points at South Carolina in their most-lopsided defeat of the season.
The Monday morning projections on the Bracketville website showed UK as a 4 seed in the 2024 NCAA Tournament, starting off March Madness in Spokane — the farthest first-week site from Lexington — and slotted into the Los Angeles regional. Those projections have the Cats playing UC Irvine in the first round, followed by possible matchups with Wisconsin, top-seeded Arizona and 2-seeded Kansas as a potential path to the Final Four in Phoenix.
UK was widely viewed as a 5 seed in last week’s bracketology projections, which could still change quite a bit between now and Selection Sunday on March 17.
CBS Sports, which has ranked the Cats a bit lower compared to other outlets this season, still had Kentucky as a 5 seed Monday morning. Those projections had UK playing NCAA Tournament games in Pittsburgh and Detroit, an example of the unpredictability regarding where the Wildcats will be sent due to their current spot on the seed list.
Next game
No. 16 Kentucky at Mississippi State
When: 7 p.m. Tuesday
TV: ESPN
Radio: WLAP-AM 630, WBUL-FM 98.1
Records: Kentucky 19-8 (9-5 SEC), Mississippi State 19-8 (8-6)
Series: Kentucky leads 102-21
Last meeting: Kentucky won 90-77 on Jan. 17, 2024, in Rupp Arena
This story was originally published February 26, 2024 at 1:05 PM.
