This college basketball season hasn’t gone by the script. It’s not just Kentucky
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Preseason favorites Kentucky, Florida and St. John's sit unranked as 2026 begins.
- Transfer-heavy builds have led to inconsistent play and defensive questions.
- Emerging programs Vandy, Arizona and Iowa State lead through cohesion and development.
After his team scored a decisive victory over Kentucky in the SEC opener last Saturday afternoon, Alabama coach Nate Oats offered up the understatement of the college basketball season.
“Kentucky’s not what everybody was hoping over there that they would be this year …” Oats said following Bama’s 89-74 win that dropped the Wildcats to 9-5 on the season.
It’s true that UK’s Mark Pope is still searching for answers as the midway point of the 2025-26 campaign nears. It’s also true that he’s not the only head coach in this situation.
When the season began, Kentucky, Florida and St. John’s were all viewed as legitimate national title contenders.
Rick Pitino’s Red Storm sat No. 1 in the final CBS Sports rankings of the preseason. ESPN had Florida at No. 2 on its list. And The Athletic placed Kentucky, which had already knocked off preseason AP No. 1 Purdue in an exhibition, at No. 2 in its final rankings before the real games began.
All three teams were coming off successful 2024-25 seasons, and all three had bolstered their rosters through a series of transfer portal moves that seemed shrewd at the time.
That was the landscape two months ago. Now? Well, when the first AP Top 25 poll of the calendar year dropped Monday afternoon, it told a different tale about the top of the rankings.
Kentucky? Unranked. St. John’s? Unranked. Florida? Unranked.
With league play now underway, that trio of preseason darlings is closer to the NCAA Tournament bubble than any No. 1 seed conversation.
Kentucky’s troubles hardly need repeating here. The Wildcats have struggled with injury issues, sure, but the team’s overall roster construction remains a major question mark now that everyone is back on the court, with Jaland Lowe — who will be dealing with a shoulder injury from here on out — clearly the Cats’ only true point guard, the offensive attack a far cry from Pope’s first season and the supposedly much-improved defense still a work in progress.
The team UK scored its biggest win over, St. John’s, is scuffling, too. Pitino’s team was 9-5 going into a game against Butler on Tuesday night, already matching the loss total from last season, when the Red Storm went 31-5 and claimed the Big East title.
And the supposed team to beat in college basketball’s best conference, Florida, also went into Tuesday night — and a big matchup with Georgia — at 9-5, already exceeding its loss total from last season, when it went 36-4 and won the NCAA title.
The records entering the week were identical. And some of the problems appear similar, too.
Following the loss to UK last month, Pitino lamented his own point guard situation. Basically, the Hall of Fame coach said the Johnnies don’t have one.
“That’s our fault in recruiting,” he said. “We lost out on four different big-time point guards that we went after, and we’ve got to make the best of the situation.”
Pitino said occasional starter Dylan Darling — a transfer from Idaho State — was recruited to be a backup. It’ll take a collective playmaking effort from everyone to make do, he added.
Florida last season boasted a tremendous backcourt — led by Walter Clayton Jr., but bolstered by several others — but all of those players departed. Still, Todd Golden managed to bring back the nation’s top returning frontcourt and filled out his starting five with seemingly two of the best guard pickups of the offseason: Princeton transfer Xaivian Lee and Arkansas transfer Boogie Fland.
That duo hasn’t lived up to expectations, however, and Florida entered this week shooting 28.0% from 3-point range. That ranked 346th nationally. Among high-major schools, only Boston College (27.9%) is shooting more poorly from the perimeter.
“If we can shoot a little bit better, I think we can be pretty dang good,” Golden said before the SEC opener over the weekend.
His Gators dropped that one to Missouri — and shot 7 for 27 from deep — a major upset even taking Florida’s own struggles into consideration. That same day, St. John’s blew a double-digit lead and lost at home to Providence, while Kentucky spent most of the afternoon in Tuscaloosa trailing by double digits before its 15-point loss.
College basketball’s surprise teams
Meanwhile, the top of the rankings look a little different. Arizona, Michigan and Iowa State hold the 1-3 spots this week. Those teams were well-regarded before the season began — 13th, seventh and 16th, respectively, in the first AP poll — but few projected them in the elite tier.
They’ve each achieved this early success in different ways.
Every key contributor for No. 1 Arizona is either a returning player or a college freshman. Michigan landed coveted transfer Yaxel Lendeborg out of the portal, and only one of the Wolverines’ top six scorers was with the program last season. Iowa State has a couple of transfers, a couple of freshmen and a few returnees among its core group.
Florida and Kentucky ranked 1-2 in the SEC during the preseason, but every measure — the rankings, the metrics and even the Las Vegas odds — says Vanderbilt is the team to beat in the nation’s toughest league. Vandy was picked 11th in the SEC preseason poll but goes into this week ranked No. 11 nationally and still undefeated. The Commodores will play No. 13 Alabama on Wednesday night.
Sophomore guard Tyler Tanner has, surprisingly, been one of the most effective players in the SEC so far this season. He was a Vandy reserve last season and an unheralded, three-star recruit the season before that.
Second-year coach Mark Byington has a clear-cut top eight in his rotation. Five of those players are first-year transfers. Three are returnees. None are freshmen.
Alabama is the No. 2 team in the SEC heading into this week. No surprise there. John Calipari’s Arkansas Razorbacks — led by star freshman guard Darius Acuff Jr. — are next. Another big surprise, the Georgia Bulldogs — picked 14th in the SEC preseason media poll — are 18th nationally and the fourth-best team in the SEC.
The Dogs lead the nation in scoring — 99.4 points per game going into the matchup at Florida on Tuesday night — and coach Mike White has 11 guys playing double-digit minutes this season. Five are transfers, four are returnees and two are freshmen.
There are all kinds of ways to build a college basketball team these days. Kentucky, St. John’s and Florida were praised all preseason for their approaches to roster-building in the transfer portal era, with Pope and Pitino relying on NIL riches to piece together the bulk of their squads and Golden constructing what looked like a perfect starting lineup through retention and recruiting.
So far, it hasn’t worked out for any of them.
On Saturday afternoon, Oats finished his thought about Kentucky — the one that began by pointing out that the Cats hadn’t lived up to expectations — by praising Pope and predicting that this UK team would figure it out by the end of the season.
“That’s a high-talent team over there,” he said.
After that loss to UK last month, Pitino acknowledged that everyone in college basketball thought he would have a great team this season. St. John’s isn’t a great team, he said.
“But we can be a good team, and we can get better and better and better.”
On Monday, the Johnnies didn’t get a single vote in the AP Top 25 poll. Florida was 35th in the voting. Kentucky was 37th.
There’s still time for all three of these preseason favorites to turn things around. But at the halfway point, what looked good on paper in November isn’t translating to quality wins on the court.
This story was originally published January 6, 2026 at 6:00 AM.
