With March Madness inching closer, Jay Bilas is ready to give his take on how the college basketball landscape looks with just three weeks of regular-season play left.
Bilas just released his ranking of the top 68 college basketball teams at ESPN, and the Kentucky Wildcats came in at No. 28. Just like the latest top-25 polls, Bilas isn’t ready to call these Wildcats a top-25 team just yet.
Here’s what he had to say about Kentucky.
“The early returns on this Kentucky team were not promising,” Bilas wrote.
“The Wildcats opened the season 5-4 with lopsided losses to Michigan State and Gonzaga. And it hasn’t been all clear skies since — they scored only 55 points in a 25-point road loss at Vanderbilt on Jan. 27 — but they have righted the ship with a 12-4 response to their sputtering start. One clear difference has been the play of Otega Oweh. He averaged 13.7 points through those first nine games, but 18.8 in the 16 since. They’ll need him to maintain that with Kam Williams and Jayden Quaintance still out.”
The Wildcats actually have four wins over teams ranked ahead of them: No. 20 Arkansas, No. 19 St. John’s, and No. 16 Tennessee (twice). Kentucky also has wins over No. 31 Texas, No. 34 Indiana, and No. 61 LSU.
All eight of Kentucky’s losses are to teams in this ranking, the lowest being Missouri at No. 49. The other seven losses are against teams in the top 23 of this ranking.
Florida, who Kentucky just lost on the road to and hosts in the regular-season finale, checks in at No. 7.
So, do you like this spot for the Cats? Sound off in the comments!
