NCAA Tournament Selection Committee reveals what it thinks of Kentucky’s season so far
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Game day: Texas 82, No. 15 Kentucky 78
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Saturday night’s men’s basketball game between Kentucky and Texas in Austin, Texas.
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Selection Sunday is now just four weeks away, but everyone got an early peek at what the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee thinks about the 2024-25 men’s college basketball season so far.
The March Madness decision-makers like what the Kentucky Wildcats have done.
UK was listed as a 3 seed and the No. 10 overall team in the 2025 bracket unveiled by the selection committee during a made-for-TV special Saturday afternoon. Committee members gathered in Indianapolis all week for a dry run of sorts, with the real selection show set for March 16.
The objective for this past week was to come up with the top 16 teams for the 2025 NCAA Tournament field — as of Friday’s games — and Mark Pope’s Wildcats have earned a spot among that group.
While the results of Saturday’s show obviously aren’t binding for the real bracket, the teams were seeded by the actual selection committee using the same principles that will be applied to sorting out the NCAA Tournament field.
Kentucky went into its game at Texas on Saturday night with a 17-7 overall record and a 6-5 mark in SEC play. The Wildcats have four victories over teams currently in the AP top five — two wins over No. 5 Tennessee, and one apiece over co-No. 3 teams Duke and Florida — as well as a victory over Texas A&M, which was the No. 6 overall team on the committee’s list Saturday.
The Cats have also been playing without key players for much of the season. Lamont Butler, Kerr Kriisa and Jaxson Robinson have all been ruled out for Saturday’s game against Texas.
NCAA selection committee chair Bubba Cunningham, the athletics director of North Carolina, singled out Kentucky when talking about the 3 seeds during Saturday’s show, highlighting their big wins over some of the top teams in the bracket while noting the injuries that the Wildcats have been struggling with.
2025 NCAA Tournament bracket
The early bracket revealed by the selection committee on Saturday featured Auburn as the top overall seed for the NCAA Tournament with Alabama, Duke and Florida joining the Tigers as the other 1 seeds in the field.
Kentucky will host Auburn on March 1 in Rupp Arena, and Cunningham said that the Tigers were the “unanimous choice” of the selection committee to receive the top overall seed in the early bracket.
The 2 seeds were Tennessee, Texas A&M, Purdue and Houston. The Volunteers were the top 2 seed on the board, and Cunningham said they were highly considered for the final 1 seed spot that went to Florida. With the Aggies ranked as the second 2 seed, that means five of the top six teams in the field came from the SEC.
Joining Kentucky as 3 seeds were Iowa State, Wisconsin and Arizona, with UK ranked as the second of those four teams and sent to the West Region, which will be played in San Francisco. The 1 and 2 seeds in the West were Florida and Houston.
And the 4 seeds were Texas Tech, Michigan, Kansas and St. John’s.
Cunningham mentioned Michigan State and Marquette as being “right there” for the 16th and final spot. St. John’s is in its second season under Rick Pitino, who has the Red Storm in the AP top 10 for the first time in 25 years.
There were a total of six teams from the SEC among the top 16 seeds for the NCAA Tournament, as of now. The league had nine teams ranked in the AP Top 25 this week. The latest edition of ESPN’s Bracketology, which was released Friday, had 14 schools from the conference in the 2025 field, with John Calipari’s Arkansas Razorbacks among the final four teams to make it. LSU and South Carolina were the only SEC teams not in the new Bracketology projections.
The Big Ten had 10 teams in that mock bracket. The Big 12 had eight, and no other league had more than four teams. Louisville was listed as a 7 seed on ESPN’s list.
After the Texas matchup, Kentucky has just six regular-season games remaining.
The Cats will host Vanderbilt on Wednesday night, and the remaining slate also features games at Alabama (Feb. 22), Auburn in Lexington (March 1) and the season finale at No. 21-ranked Missouri on March 8.
This story was originally published February 15, 2025 at 12:55 PM.
