Kentucky has a new spot in final Top 25 rankings (and bracketology) after a perfect week
For the first time since SEC play began, Kentucky won two games in one week.
The perfect sweep featured wins over LSU and Missouri and came in the final week of the men’s college basketball regular season, and the Wildcats were rewarded with the No. 15 position in the Associated Press Top 25 rankings Monday afternoon. That was a rise of four spots from last week’s rankings.
It was — amazingly, considering all of the team’s major wins this season — the first two-win week in SEC play for Kentucky, which was ranked No. 6 nationally to start the first full week of the conference schedule and has dropped a little bit in just about every poll since.
This Top 25 poll — the final edition before the postseason begins for UK — is the first in which the Wildcats have moved up since their victory over Florida in the SEC opener back on Jan. 4. The Cats were No. 23 in the AP preseason rankings, and coach Mark Pope’s team has remained in the top 20 ever since the games began.
Kentucky will also enter this week’s SEC Tournament with a strong case for a 3 seed on Selection Sunday, according to the latest bracketology updates. The Wildcats will play either Georgia or Oklahoma at about 9:30 p.m. EDT Thursday, and a victory there would advance UK to a game against Alabama in the SEC Tournament quarterfinals around the same time Friday.
Both of those games will be on SEC Network.
Kentucky finished the first regular season under Pope at 21-10, with a 10-8 record in the conference.
Duke was ranked No. 1 in the new AP Top 25 poll, replacing Auburn at the top of the rankings. The Tigers had held the No. 1 spot for the previous eight weeks but dropped both of their games in the final week of the regular season — a loss at Texas A&M and a home defeat against Alabama.
Houston was No. 2 in Monday’s poll, followed by No. 3 Auburn, No. 4 Florida and No. 5 Alabama. Rounding out the top 10 were No. 6 St. John’s, No. 7 Michigan State, No. 8 Tennessee, No. 9 Texas Tech and No. 10 Clemson.
Louisville finished its first regular season under coach Pat Kelsey at No. 13 in the rankings, moving up one spot from last week. The Cardinals (25-6) finished 18-2 in the ACC and will be the No. 2 seed in that league tournament.
This is the highest that U of L has been ranked at the end of the regular season since the Cards were 10th nationally in the final poll before the 2017 tournament. That was Rick Pitino’s final season as Louisville’s head coach.
UK basketball bracketology update
Kentucky’s two-win week led to a bump in the bracketology projections, too.
The Cats’ blowout victory over LSU in the home finale wasn’t an unexpected result, but UK’s 91-83 victory at then-No. 15 Missouri helped solidify Pope’s team as a favorite to land a 3 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
Before that game, some of the bracketology projections on Bracketmatrix.com had Kentucky as a 3 seed, but others had the Wildcats as a 4 seed. The updated boards that have been posted since the win at Mizzou are still split between a 3 and a 4, but most of those projections now have UK as one of the 3 seeds, which would put the Cats in line to play a 14 seed in the first round of the NCAA Tournament and either a 6 or 11 seed in the round of 32.
The most recent update to the ESPN Bracketology board has Kentucky as a 3 seed, starting the tournament in Milwaukee and playing in the Atlanta regional. ESPN’s Joe Lunardi had UK as the top 4 seed — the No. 13 overall team in the field — before the win at Missouri on Saturday.
The teams projected in UK’s general area in the brackets going into the week are Iowa State, Wisconsin, Texas A&M, Clemson, Maryland and Purdue, and the Cats will likely be battling that group for the final three 3 seeds in the field.
Auburn, Duke, Florida and Houston are unanimous choices to be 1 seeds. Alabama, Michigan State and Tennessee are in line for 2 seeds, with St. John’s and Texas Tech viewed by many as battling for the last 2 seed.
However, a couple of brackets that have come out since Kentucky’s win Saturday placed the Cats as the final 2 seed in the field, suggesting that there might still be room for UK to move up a seed line with a good showing in the SEC Tournament. To achieve that, the Wildcats would certainly have to win Thursday and then likely need at least a victory over Alabama in the quarterfinals Friday night.
There are currently 13 SEC teams widely projected to make the NCAA Tournament field, with Oklahoma closest to the wrong side of the bubble, Texas generally assumed to be one of the first few teams out, and LSU and South Carolina the only conference teams not in the picture for an at-large berth.
The NCAA Tournament Selection Show will begin at 6 p.m. EDT on CBS.
The eight first-week sites for March Madness will be Cleveland, Denver, Milwaukee, Providence, Raleigh, Seattle, Wichita and Lexington, though the Wildcats will not be allowed to play in the games in Rupp Arena. The regionals are Atlanta, Indianapolis, Newark and San Francisco.
And the 2025 Final Four is set for April 5 and 7 at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas.
