Kentucky vs. Santa Clara game thread and pregame reading

The Kentucky Wildcats will take on the Santa Clara Broncos on Friday afternoon in the First Round of the NCAA Tournament. Game time is set for 12:15 PM ET on CBS — the first game of the day. The Cats are 2.5-point favorites. Mark Pope’s squad is 21-13 in year two as they look to right the ship of an

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What is the story about?

The Kentucky Wildcats will take on the Santa Clara Broncos on Friday afternoon in the First Round of the NCAA Tournament. Game time is set for 12:15 PM ET on CBS — the first game of the day. The Cats are 2.5-point favorites.

Mark Pope’s squad is 21-13 in year two as they look to right the ship of an ugly season. The next loss Kentucky suffers will be just its fifth season in history with 14 losses. For the second straight season, injuries have played a big part this season, but when you’re at Kentucky,

there are no excuses.

The Cats are coming off their third loss this season to the Florida Gators — this time in the SEC Tournament. They were able to scrap together two wins in Nashville, one over a 10-seed (Missouri) in the NCAA Tournament, just like the Broncos.

Kentucky will lean on its veterans to hopefully make some noise this March. As bad as it’s been this season, this team was built on guys with extensive Madness experience.

Collin Chandler, Brandon Garrison, Trent Noah, and Otega Oweh all made it to the Sweet 16 a season ago for the Cats. Mo Dioubate made it to the Elite Eight with the Alabama Crimson Tide. And Denzel Aberdeen won a national championship with Florida.

Herb Sendek, a former assistant for Rick Pitino at UK, has his Broncos at 26-8 on the season. They beat the McNeese State Cowboys, then the St. Mary’s Gaels twice as far as NCAA Tournament teams go. They also lost to the St. Louis Billikens once, St. Mary’s once, and to the Gonzaga Bulldogs three times.

There’s no such thing as a moral victory, but the Broncos lost by an average of just 10 points to the Zags, with their biggest defeat being just 12 points. For context, Kentucky lost to the Bulldogs by 35 points.

Santa Clara is a very good offensive team statistically, but they’ve been average or worse against good opponents, and they’re terrible defensively against everyone. This is a hot upset pick, but Kentucky should win.

While this season hasn’t been fun, Pope showed last season that he could win in March. Let’s hope for more of the same.