College basketball officially begins on November 1, with the Kentucky Wildcats’ 2026-27 season tipoff coming two days later on the 3rd, when Mark Pope and the Wildcats welcome Manhattan to town to get the season rolling.
Exhibition season is in full swing across the country, with Kentucky having one under its belt and two more on deck. That means one thing: we must pay attention to preseason rankings and overreact to them.
James Fletcher III of On3 posted an article predicting what the official preseason
AP top 25 will look like ahead of the 2026-27 season. Fletcher predicted these rankings based on a number of factors, including analytics and models from many places across college basketball.
This prediction slots Kentucky at No. 19 as the predicted preseason ranking for Pope and his team as he heads into year three in Lexington.
The article notes that Kentucky’s strengths include plenty of talent in the frontcourt to maximize the skill sets of the incoming guards.
Fletcher said, “After getting Malachi Moreno back from the NBA Draft process and landing Milan Momcilovic in the transfer portal, the Kentucky frontcourt now has plenty of talent to maximize the skillsets of the incoming guards Mark Pope landed.”
As for questions, Fletcher stated, “The biggest question for the Wildcats comes on offense, where they have complementary skillsets but lack a clear answer for who will become the go-to self-creation option on the perimeter when needed.”
Usually, the questions or concerns point to the defense, but in this article, they point to an offensive concern instead. We’ll see if that “go-to self-creation” guy is Alex Wilkins, who seems fully capable of doing so, or even a guy like freshman Mason Williams off the bench.
There are tons of things to like about this Kentucky team, but according to analytics, it’s still lacking a few needed things to have what it takes to cut down the nets.
Kentucky will play against numerous teams in this prediction’s top 25, including No. 1 Florida, No. 5 Texas, No. 8 Virginia, No. 9 Arkansas, No. 10 Louisville, No. 11 Tennessee (2x), No. 17 Kansas, No. 21 Texas Tech (exhibition), and No. 23 Alabama.
No. 19 heading into the season isn’t ideal, but the Cats have to start somewhere. Time to prove ‘em wrong and make a statement with some early-season non-conference wins.
