Is this going to be the toughest Kentucky basketball schedule of the Calipari era?

A young and inexperienced team, even by John Calipari’s standards. A loaded schedule, according to all early indications.

Some bumps in the road should be expected for the upcoming Kentucky men’s basketball season, which will feature a slate of games that could turn out to be the most difficult in the program’s recent history.

UK’s complete 2023-24 schedule won’t be finalized until later this year, but pretty much all of the marquee games have been confirmed, and it’s looking like quite the gauntlet for a team that will be overly reliant on new faces amid a roster with only two players who can claim any extensive experience at the college level.

Just how tough a road will the Wildcats have this season?

A look at what we know so far about UK’s schedule shows a high volume of games against high-major teams projected to make next year’s NCAA Tournament.

Using ESPN’s most recent 2024 Bracketology update — and, yes, it’s July — as the sorting tool, the Wildcats are due to play at least 14 games against teams from multi-bid conferences that are projected to make the next March Madness field.

If that’s a sign of difficulty — and it seems like a solid one — UK’s 2023-24 schedule has the potential to be the toughest in Calipari’s 15 seasons as Kentucky’s head coach.

A quick rundown of the Cats’ upcoming foes: the Champions Classic game against Kansas (No. 1 overall seed in ESPN’s Bracketology), two games against Tennessee (2 seed), a home game with Gonzaga (3 seed), two games against Arkansas (4 seed), a home game against Alabama (4 seed), a trip to Texas A&M (5 seed), two games against Mississippi State (7 seed), a home game with Miami (8 seed and ranked No. 10 overall by CBS Sports), a trip to Auburn (8 seed) and two games against Florida (10 seed).

UK will also face at least one more opponent with NCAA Tournament potential in the CBS Sports Classic, which will pit the Cats against either North Carolina (4 seed), UCLA (7 seed) or Ohio State (the second team out of the Bracketology projections). That’s a possible 15th foe that could start the season as a projected tournament team.

(The CBS Sports Classic matchups should be announced soon. Both UNC and OSU have been speculated on as potential matchups. UK lost to UCLA in last year’s event.)

And there’s always the possibility of a late surprise, like when Calipari added a game at Gonzaga to the 2022-23 schedule, which wasn’t announced until early August of last year.

Obviously, these Bracketology projections are extremely preliminary. Preseason rankings can often be wildly wrong — North Carolina was No. 1 before last season, for instance, before missing March Madness altogether — but just as some of the aforementioned teams might not make the 2024 tournament, others on UK’s schedule that are currently being overlooked could very well play their way in once the games begin.

On paper, at least, this schedule could produce the most high-level opponents of any under Calipari.

Kentucky basketball schedules

Over his previous 14 years as Kentucky’s coach — excluding regular-season matchups against teams from traditionally one-bid leagues — Calipari’s Cats have never played more than 15 games versus teams that went on to make that season’s NCAA Tournament.

Two of his previous UK teams have hit that 15 number exactly.

The 2017-18 squad — another freshman-heavy group led by Shai Gilgeous-Alexander — was the first to do it. Those Cats went 6-9 against such competition, finishing the season with a 26-11 record, a 5 seed ousted in the Sweet Sixteen of the NCAA Tournament.

The 2018-19 team — with PJ Washington, Tyler Herro and Keldon Johnson among the standouts — also played 15 regular-season games against high-level NCAA Tournament teams, going an impressive 11-4 against those opponents, finishing the season as a 2 seed with a 30-7 record after an Elite Eight overtime loss to Auburn (a team the Cats beat by 27 points five weeks earlier).

Kentucky has played against a double-digit number of such teams six other times in Calipari’s tenure, including 13 regular-season games against high-level NCAA Tournament competition last season and 12 in each of the two seasons before that.

For the most part, the toughest Kentucky schedules — using this metric to judge toughness — have come more recently. Five of the six toughest regular-season slates have come over the past six seasons. All five of Calipari’s “easiest” schedules came during his first seven seasons on the job.

The reason for this is quite clear. Calipari’s teams have typically played a few high-quality, non-conference foes every season, but the Southeastern Conference has been markedly better at men’s basketball in recent years, especially compared to Calipari’s early tenure in Lexington.

That 2024 Bracketology board projects a total of eight SEC teams in the field. (Kentucky is a 6 seed). The Big Ten (nine selections) is the only league with more in the bracket. In Calipari’s first nine seasons at Kentucky, the SEC never had more than five teams in any NCAA Tournament, and the league had only three March Madness selections three different times in that span.

Times have clearly changed in the SEC, and it’s made for a much more difficult road for Kentucky, which appears to be in for another tough one.

In addition to the eight teams in the Bracketology field, the conference will also include a few more intriguing foes: Louisiana State (with its influx of transfer portal talent), Mississippi (with new coach Chris Beard), Missouri (which made waves under first-year coach Dennis Gates last season) and Vanderbilt (an NIT quarterfinalist the past two years and seemingly on the cusp of breaking through as Coach Jerry Stackhouse continues to build that program).

It wouldn’t be a shock to see any of those squads in the 2024 NCAA Tournament bracket (and UK will play Vandy twice this season).

With fifth-year veterans Antonio Reeves (in his second season at UK) and Tre Mitchell (a newcomer to the program) boasting the only real college experience on the 2023-24 roster, there are sure to be hiccups and nail-biters along the way, with few breaks for these Wildcats.

Other UK schedule history notes

▪ The UK schedule with the fewest number of high-level NCAA Tournament opponents in the Calipari era came in 2015-16, when the Wildcats played only five such games in the regular season: Duke, Kansas, Texas A&M and Vanderbilt twice. UK also played Louisville that season. Those Cardinals were No. 16 in the final AP poll but missed March Madness due to a self-imposed tournament ban stemming from rules violations within the program.

▪ One of Calipari’s worst teams actually had one of his “easiest” schedules. The 2012-13 squad — led by Nerlens Noel, who was lost for the season after a February knee injury — played only seven such teams: Duke, Notre Dame, Louisville, Mississippi, Missouri and Florida twice. U of L won the national title that season, and the SEC had only three NCAA Tournament teams. Florida won the league and got a 3 seed. Missouri finished fifth in the regular season and got a 9 seed. Ole Miss ended up in a three-way tie for second and still needed to win the conference tournament to get in as a 12 seed. UK and Alabama also tied for second with the Rebels (12-6 league marks) but were sent to the NIT. A terrible season for the SEC.

▪ Calipari’s worst non-conference schedule occurred during his first season, when Kentucky played only one NCAA Tournament team from a major conference: a 71-62 victory over rival Louisville, which ended up as a 9 seed. The Cats also beat North Carolina, Indiana, UConn and Stanford that season, but all four teams ended up with losing conference records. John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins and the rest of that bunch started the season 19-0 and finished with a 35-3 mark. UK played future NCAA Tournament teams Florida, Tennessee and Vanderbilt two times each during the regular season.

▪ The previously mentioned 2017-18 schedule resulted in the second-toughest slate of the Calipari era, according to the KenPom ratings, which rated that one at No. 12 nationally. The Cats’ highest finish in that category came during the 2013-14 season, but UK’s finish at No. 6 on the KenPom strength of schedule list had little to do with the regular-season opposition. Kentucky played just eight games against high-level NCAA Tournament opposition during the regular season. Only two other SEC teams made the NCAA Tournament that year. In the postseason, the Cats played No. 1 overall seed Florida in the SEC Tournament title game, then beat 9-seeded Kansas State, 1-seeded Wichita State, 4-seeded Louisville, 2-seeded Michigan and 2-seeded Wisconsin before losing to UConn (a 7 seed) in the NCAA title game.

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