The first Top 25 poll is here. Kentucky gets its lowest preseason ranking in Calipari era.

The expectations of those closest to this Kentucky basketball team — the coaches, players, and especially the fans — are the same as always.

A Final Four contender. Possibly even an NCAA champion.

Fair or not, that’s the norm around these parts this time of year.

For just about the first time in the John Calipari era, those clearly aren’t the expectations outside of the UK basketball bubble.

The first Associated Press Top 25 poll dropped Monday afternoon, and the Wildcats were ranked the lowest they’ve been in the 15 preseasons since Calipari came to town back in 2009.

The AP voters pegged Kentucky at No. 16 to start the 2023-24 season. The previous low in the Calipari era was No. 11, which is where the 2010-11 team started the season before ultimately advancing to the Final Four, somewhere the Cats haven’t been since 2015. They were also ranked No. 10 to start the 2020-21 and 2021-22 seasons.

In the other 11 of Calipari’s 14 preseasons here, UK was ranked in the top five nationally.

Not this year.

The AP ranking aligns with other preseason lists. ESPN has UK at No. 15, with CBS Sports ranking the Cats at No. 16, and the KenPom ratings placing them at No. 18. The annual preseason magazines and lists from other college basketball experts generally have Kentucky in that same 15-20 range.

Outside expectations might not match the usual hype around Kentucky this time around, but there were plenty of references made to UK basketball greatness and the goal of a ninth national championship banner in Rupp at the team’s Big Blue Madness celebration Friday night.

And while Calipari will talk plenty over the next few weeks about how this particular team might need a little time to progress, he’s made it quite clear he believes this roster is built for a deep run come March.

The talent is there, with another star-studded No. 1 recruiting class, led by projected NBA lottery picks Justin Edwards and D.J. Wagner, sky-high-upside 7-footer Aaron Bradshaw, McDonald’s All-American Reed Sheppard and five-star prospect Rob Dillingham. Top backcourt scorer Antonio Reeves returns — as do sophomores Adou Thiero and Ugonna Onyenso — with veteran forward Tre Mitchell transferring in and intriguing big man Zvonimir Ivisic arriving late.

It’s a roster filled with potential — UK has arguably the highest ceiling of anyone in the country — but AP voters clearly went with what are perceived to be the safer bets in this first Top 25 poll, prioritizing the proven teams and players amid a current college basketball landscape that has seen veterans of the sport have more on-court success than inexperienced teenagers.

The top of the rankings reflect that thinking.

At No. 1 is Kansas, a program that returns three starters from last season’s No. 1-seeded team and adds top-ranked transfer Hunter Dickinson, among others. The Jayhawks received 46 of the 63 first-place votes.

Duke is No. 2, with sophomore Kyle Filipowski — possibly the top challenger to Purdue’s Zach Edey for national player of the year honors — back for year two, alongside returnees Jeremy Roach, Tyrese Proctor and Mark Mitchell.

Purdue is next on the list at No. 3 with a roster led by Edey, the reigning national player of the year. The Boilermakers bring back all five starters from a squad that earned a No. 1 seed in last season’s tournament.

Michigan State will start at No. 4, and Tom Izzo brings back a wealth of experience — five of his top six scorers from last season — to lead a top-five national recruiting class.

Marquette checks in at No. 5, with Shaka Smart’s team returning four starters plus the sixth man from a squad that earned a 2 seed in last season’s NCAA Tournament.

Defending national champion UConn, Houston, Creighton, Tennessee and Florida Atlantic round out the top 10, in that order, and there’s plenty of college basketball experience on each of those rosters, too.

Other SEC teams in the preseason Top 25 include No. 14 Arkansas, No. 15 Texas A&M and No. 24 Alabama.

Kentucky will have plenty of opportunities to make an early impression, with games against No. 1 Kansas (Nov. 14), No. 13 Miami (Nov. 28) and No. 19 North Carolina (Dec. 16) over the first few weeks of the schedule. The Wildcats are likely to be undermanned for much of that time, however, with post players Bradshaw and Onyenso still recovering from offseason foot injuries and Ivisic — the 7-foot-2 Croatian center better known as “Big Z” — getting to campus just last week.

Calipari is expected to rely on smaller lineups for the first few games of the season, at the very least, as he looks to guide UK to its first Final Four appearance in nine years (and advance past the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2019). He’ll also hope that the freshmen — Edwards and Wagner, especially — can get acclimated to this new level quickly and start making a considerable impact right off the bat.

The Wildcats tip off the regular season Nov. 6 against New Mexico State in Rupp Arena.

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