What is the story about?
Greetings, BBN!
The Kentucky Wildcats are now handing in a complete resume for Selection Sunday, and unlike a lot of other programs around the country, theirs has everything it needs to comfortably make the field and land them squarely in the middle of the bracket.
At one point in the nonconference, they were 5-4, and at one point early in SEC play, they were 9-6, but now, after 31 regular-season games and 3 games in Nashville, they’re 21-13 with 12 wins over SEC teams, 5 wins over ranked opponents,
and no bad losses. That’s an NCAA Tournament team, ready to make some noise.
Let’s take a look at their resume heading into Selection Sunday:
Resume Review (3/14/26):
Notes:
- Kentucky’s Quad 1 wins are St. John’s on a neutral floor, at Tennessee, at Arkansas, at Tennessee at home, and Vanderbilt at home. Overall, in the first two quadrants, they are 12-12, with the only non-Quad 1 losses being at home to Missouri and Georgia—both likely NCAA Tournament teams.
- Current projections at ESPN, CBSsports, SportingNews.com, and other bracketology sites show Kentucky as most likely to get a 7-seed.
- Who will UK’s opponent be in the first round? The most likely candidates: Santa Clara, NC State, or UCF, or perhaps Ohio State.
- If they win in the first round, who would their second-round opponent most likely be? Michigan State, Iowa State, UConn, or Houston. That’s a murderer’s row of 2-seeds. I’d especially want to avoid Houston and UConn, but the other two seem beatable so long as the Cats don’t repeat their performance against the Spartans in Madison Square Garden.
- Going back to 2007-2008, Kentucky has won 21+ games every single season, not shortened by a global pandemic. This was also the first season since 2018 where they played 34 games before the NCAA Tournament, since they advanced not once but twice in the SEC Tournament by winning in both the first and second rounds before the Florida quarterfinal game.
