UK basketball starts high in Top 25 rankings. Analytics see Final Four potential
Mark Pope’s second Kentucky basketball team will start the season with higher outside expectations than his first.
Pope’s Wildcats are positioned at No. 9 in the first Associated Press Top 25 men’s college basketball rankings, which were released Monday afternoon, three weeks from the official start date of the 2025-26 season.
This Kentucky roster will feature SEC preseason player of the year Otega Oweh — the Cats’ leading scorer from last season was given that honor Monday morning — along with fellow returnees Collin Chandler, Brandon Garrison and Trent Noah, plus 10 newcomers that run the spectrum from established college players to freshmen entering their first year of NCAA competition.
UK will tip off its regular season Nov. 4 against Nicholls in Rupp Arena, with high-profile, home exhibition games against high-major opponents Purdue (Oct. 24) and Georgetown (Oct. 30) before that. Purdue is No. 1 in the AP Top 25 rankings, the first time the Boilermakers have received that designation.
Pope’s first team as Kentucky’s head coach barely made it into the preseason Top 25, coming in at No. 23 in the initial rankings last year. Those Cats worked their way up to No. 4 in the national rankings by the fourth poll of the regular season, following a high-profile victory over Duke and several impressive, blowout wins in the early nonconference portion of the schedule.
This group will also have an opportunity for an early rise in the Top 25 rankings. Kentucky’s third game of the season will be at No. 11 Louisville on Nov. 11, with a Champions Classic matchup against No. 22 Michigan State set for Nov. 18 and two marquee opponents in one week — No. 25 North Carolina on Dec. 2 in Rupp Arena and No. No. 21 Gonzaga on Dec. 5 in Nashville — not long after that.
The full top 10 in the preseason AP rankings: No. 1 Purdue, No. 2 Houston, No. 3 Florida, No. 4 UConn, No. 5 St. John’s, No. 6 Duke, No. 7 Michigan, No. 8 BYU, No. 9 Kentucky and No. 10 Texas Tech.
UK basketball in KenPom ratings
The most popular analytics site in college basketball is even higher on Kentucky than the human voters.
KenPom released its preseason ratings Sunday morning, and the Wildcats will start the 2025-26 campaign at No. 4 on that oft-cited list. The Cats trail only Houston, Florida and Purdue in the initial KenPom ratings, which weigh a team’s past success, returning production, incoming talent and other variables.
This UK team is expected to be incredibly deep.
Oweh will start for the Wildcats, alongside a projected lineup that includes new point guard Jaland Lowe, Florida transfer guard Denzel Aberdeen, Alabama transfer forward Mouhamed Dioubate and Garrison, the team’s backup center last season.
Kentucky’s bench will include Chandler and five-star freshman Jasper Johnson in the backcourt, Noah, Tulane transfer Kam Williams and high-upside freshman Braydon Hawthorne at the wings, plus a group of big men featuring McDonald’s All-American freshman Malachi Moreno, international forward Andrija Jelavic, Miami (Ohio) transfer Reece Potter and Arizona State transfer Jayden Quaintance, who is projected as an NBA lottery pick but will likely miss the start of the regular season as he continues to recover from surgery for a torn ACL.
Kentucky is also one of only three schools to receive a top-10 preseason rating in both offensive and defensive efficiency, joining Houston and Florida — the two teams in last season’s NCAA title game — in that elite group. KenPom has UK with the No. 8 offense and No. 4 defense nationally.
Pope made improving the Wildcats’ defense a priority with his offseason roster additions after UK finished No. 51 nationally in defensive efficiency last season and spent much of the 2024-25 campaign outside the top 100 in that stat. Kentucky was 10th in offensive efficiency last season.
The preseason KenPom top 10: No. 1 Houston, No. 2 Florida, No. 3 Purdue, No. 4 Kentucky, No. 5 UConn, No. 6 Illinois, No. 7 Duke, No. 8 Gonzaga, No. 9 Tennessee and No. 10 UCLA.
Other AP Top 25 rankings notes
A few more notes from the first AP Top 25 rankings of the season:
- Louisville, at No. 11, is in the preseason rankings for just the second time in the past eight years. The Cardinals started out at No. 5 nationally during the 2019-20 season. That program went nearly four years without being ranked in the Top 25 at any point in a season before first-year coach Pat Kelsey led them into the Top 25 last season. U of L has not won an NCAA Tournament game since 2017.
- A total of six SEC teams are in the initial AP rankings this season. That list includes No. 3 Florida, No. 9 Kentucky, No. 14 Arkansas, No. 15 Alabama, No. 18 Tennessee and No. 20 Auburn. Six additional teams from the league also received votes, with Texas (29th in the voting), Ole Miss (32nd), Missouri (34th), Vanderbilt (tied for 35th), Mississippi State (39th) and Oklahoma (tied for 43rd) ending up on that list. Last year, the SEC put nine teams in the preseason AP Top 25 before landing a record 14 teams in the NCAA Tournament.
- Kentucky finished with the No. 3 toughest schedule in all of college basketball last season. The 2025-26 slate appears to be just as difficult. The Cats will play 12 regular-season games against teams in the preseason Top 25, with eight more games set against opponents that received votes in Monday’s poll. UK will play No. 3 Florida and No. 18 Tennessee twice each in the regular season. The nonconference schedule includes games against No. 11 Louisville, No. 22 Michigan State, No. 25 North Carolina, No. 21 Gonzaga and No. 5 St. John’s.
- Speaking of St. John’s, this is the first time since 2000 that the Red Storm have been included in the preseason AP Top 25 poll. Rick Pitino, who is entering his third season in charge of the program, led St. John’s as high as No. 5 in last season’s rankings, but his team was not included on the preseason list. Pitino has the Johnnies positioned as a legitimate national title contender this season, and they’ll play Kentucky (and his former player, Mark Pope) on Dec. 20 in Atlanta as part of a revamped CBS Sports Classic.
This story was originally published October 13, 2025 at 12:08 PM.
