Kentucky Basketball played Northern Arizona on Friday night, and it was one of the basketball games ever played. That’s about all there is to say about it.
Kentucky won the game 78-77, moving to a 3-1 record overall, but there’s still a ton to be desired. The one loss came in a blowout on Tuesday in the Champions Classic against Kansas, and the Cats followed that up with a narrow win over the Lumberjacks of Northern Arizona a few days later, a team picked to finish last in the Big Sky Conference.
Those two results made Kentucky’s overall KenPom ranking plummet. In fact, it’s at a historically low number now. No. 52 overall is where Mark Pope’s Year 3 Wildcats land after the ugly win vs. Northern Arizona.
That number is the lowest Kentucky has seen since the Mark Pope era began and the lowest ranking Kentucky has had since March 6, 2021, during the COVID-ridden season.
Frankly, it could have been a lot worse. Had the Wildcats actually lost to Northern Arizona, it would have gone down as not only one of the worst losses in Kentucky Basketball history, but also one of the biggest upsets in college basketball history.
Depending on what sportsbook you use, Kentucky was favored by as many as 34.5 points. The Eastern Illinois Panthers hold the largest regular-season point-spread upset in modern college basketball history with their 92-83 win over Iowa as a 31.5-point underdog on December 21, 2022. That means, had Kentucky lost, it would have been arguably the biggest upset in college basketball history. It was that kind of bad for the Cats.
It’s been ugly so far, with Kentucky failing to cover the spread in every one of its games to start this season, but more than that, it took two very close wins over two programs in which you were favored by 20+ against and an embarrassment of a loss on a big stage in Chicago vs. Kansas.
Things aren’t looking great on the hardwood in Lexington right now, and the numbers completely back it up. Kentucky will lose its ranking in the AP Poll, but the KenPom number shows much more than just an unranking by some voters.
A lot needs to change, and change quickly, because what Kentucky displayed on Friday night at Rupp Arena will lead to a LOT more losses for the rest of the schedule.
