Top 25 voters are losing faith in Kentucky basketball after another disappointing week

Ben Roberts
·3 min read
3

Another disappointing week for Kentucky basketball, another tumble in the national rankings.

John Calipari’s Wildcats dropped five spots to No. 22 in the Associated Press Top 25 poll Monday afternoon. UK was ranked as the No. 6 team in the country just three weeks ago, but the Cats have lost four of their six games since that point, including an unprecedented three consecutive losses in Rupp Arena.

Kentucky (16-7, 6-4 SEC) had not lost three games in a row at home since the 1966-67 season until unranked Gonzaga knocked off the Wildcats in Lexington on Saturday night. UK also dropped home games to Florida and Tennessee the previous week, and the Cats fell 79-62 at South Carolina the week before that. Their only wins over the past three weeks have come against Arkansas and Vanderbilt, the 12th- and 14th-rated teams in the SEC, respectively.

The result of this skid is Kentucky’s lowest ranking of the college basketball season. The Cats had not been positioned outside of the top 20 until Monday, and they had spent seven consecutive weeks in the top 10 of the AP poll before dropping from No. 10 to No. 17 last week.

Kentucky ended up with 217 total points in the new poll, placing them only 57 points ahead of Utah State, the 26th team in the voting and top squad outside the Top 25. The Cats had 513 points in last week’s poll. Of the 61 AP voters this week, 28 did not list the Wildcats at all on their Top 25 ballots. Only three voters left Kentucky out of the rankings last week. The Cats did not appear higher than 15th on any ballot this week.

UK’s road won’t get much easier. The Wildcats will face Ole Miss (18-5, 5-5 SEC) on Tuesday night in Rupp Arena before traveling to No. 13 Auburn (19-5, 8-3) on Saturday.

In the game against the Rebels — in which Kentucky is likely to be a single-digit favorite — the Cats will try to avoid the program’s first four-game home losing streak since 1927, three years before Adolph Rupp became UK’s head coach. The KenPom website is predicting an 86-79 Kentucky win over Ole Miss and an 87-78 Auburn victory over the Cats this weekend, according to the latest projections.

Kentucky players Antonio Reeves, left, and Zvonimir Ivisic leave the court after losing to Gonzaga on Saturday, the Wildcats’ third consecutive defeat in Rupp Arena, the first time that’s happened in the program’s history.
Kentucky players Antonio Reeves, left, and Zvonimir Ivisic leave the court after losing to Gonzaga on Saturday, the Wildcats’ third consecutive defeat in Rupp Arena, the first time that’s happened in the program’s history.

Defending national champion UConn (22-2, 12-1 Big East) held on to the No. 1 spot, and coach Dan Hurley’s Huskies have now won 12 games in a row. Purdue stayed at No. 2 in the rankings. There was a shake-up after that following losses by North Carolina and Kansas — the No. 3 and 4 teams in the previous rankings — last week.

The new top five goes like this: UConn, Purdue, Houston at No. 3, Marquette at No. 4 and Arizona at No. 5, with No. 6 Kansas, No. 7 North Carolina, No. 8 Tennessee, No. 9 Duke and No. 10 Iowa State rounding out the top 10.

In addition to Tennessee, the SEC is represented in the new Top 25 by No. 11 South Carolina, No. 13 Auburn, No. 15 Alabama and No. 22 Kentucky, with Florida (35th in the voting), Texas A&M (37th) and Ole Miss (39th) also receiving mention in Monday’s poll. Gonzaga moved up to 33rd in the voting after Saturday’s win at Kentucky.

The latest NCAA Tournament bracketology update from the Bracketville projection website Monday morning had Kentucky as a 6 seed and a total of nine SEC teams in the field.

Those projections have Purdue, UConn, Houston and Arizona as the four No. 1 seeds, in that order. Kentucky is 24th on that site’s seed list, making the Cats the final 6 seed on the bracket.

The NCAA Tournament selection committee will reveal its top 16 teams — to this point in the season — for this year’s bracket in a special show at 12:30 p.m. Saturday on CBS.

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