As if Kentucky men’s basketball fans didn’t have enough to worry about in what is becoming a season of full-blown discontent, there is a new concern brewing.
In 15 games of the 2022-23 season, John Calipari, Oscar Tshiebwe and the Wildcats (10-5, 1-2 SEC) have played themselves from a projected NCAA Tournament No. 1 seed in the preseason to a spot very near the NCAA tourney bubble.
After Sunday’s games, the hoops geeks at bracketologists.com project the NCAA Tournament cutoff for at-large teams that will receive an invitation to the Big Dance falling between No. 47 and No. 48 in the NET rankings.
Following Kentucky’s dispiriting 78-52 pummeling at the hands of then-No. 7 Alabama on Saturday, UK presently sits — gulp — No. 46 in the NET rankings.
If you dig into the NCAA tourney résumé built by the Cats so far in 2022-23, there is just not much there.
Kentucky is 0-4 in Quad 1 games (those contests deemed by the NCAA to be the most difficult and most impressive to win) and 1-1 in Quad 2 games. Of Kentucky’s nine other wins, three have come in Quad 3 contests, a whopping six in Quad 4 games (those deemed by the NCAA to be the easiest and least impressive to win).
Having missed the NCAA Tournament field entirely after going 9-16 in 2020-21 and been bounced as a No. 2 seed in last season’s round of 64 by No. 15 seed Saint Peter’s, for Kentucky to again miss the NCAA tourney entirely in 2022-23 would be — in the context of UK basketball’s elevated historical standards — a “Cat-astrophe.”
The good news, potentially, for Kentucky basketball and its despairing fan base is that the remaining UK schedule will provide the Wildcats ample opportunity to build a body of work that can still impress the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee.
Beginning with Tuesday night’s contest against South Carolina in Rupp Arena, Calipari’s Cats have 16 regular-season games remaining.
Seven of those remaining contests — based on where the NET rankings stand as of Monday morning — will be Quad 1 games. Four other contests on the remaining Kentucky schedule would qualify as Quad 2 games.
However, the bad news is that, of the 11 games left for UK that would qualify as either Quad 1 or Quad 2, five are road games.
Given that Kentucky is 1-5 so far this season in games played anywhere in the world other than Rupp Arena, it’s hard to gin up much realistic hope for the Cats beating good teams on the road.
Very much still to be determined is whether UK can best high-level opposition in Lexington. Having impending contests in Rupp against Tennessee (No. 2), Kansas (No. 4) and Arkansas (No. 16) mean UK still has a chance to add some elite wins to its postseason credentials.
Though 9-0 so far this season in Rupp Arena, only three of UK’s home wins have come against opponents ranked higher than 262 in the NET — Yale (No. 80), LSU (No. 90) and Duquesne (No. 126).
Otherwise, Kentucky’s victories in Lexington so far have come against Bellarmine (No. 262), North Florida (No. 267), Howard (No. 301), South Carolina State (No. 338), Louisville (No. 345) and Florida A&M (No. 360).
In a bigger picture, UK’s unexpected walk with mediocrity so far in 2022-23 coupled with Louisville’s all-out competitive collapse might potentially imperil one of the commonwealth of Kentucky’s proudest sports achievements.
Amazingly, the state of Kentucky has put at least one team in the men’s NCAA basketball tournament every year since 1963 (even in 2020, when the coronavirus canceled the NCAA tourney, Northern Kentucky had already qualified by winning the Horizon League Tournament to secure an automatic bid).
This year, Louisville (2-14, 0-5 ACC) is a lost cause to make the NCAA Tournament. Among our other in-state NCAA Division I teams other than UK, it will take winning a conference tournament to make the Big Dance.
For any of Eastern Kentucky (10-7, 3-1 ASUN), Morehead State (10-7, 3-1 OVC), Murray State (9-7, 4-2 Missouri Valley Conference), Northern Kentucky (10-7, 5-1 Horizon League) or Western Kentucky (9-6, 1-3 Conference USA), that goal ranks as achievable but far from certain.
(Still completing its four-year transition period for moving from NCAA Division II to Division I, Bellarmine remains ineligible for the 2023 NCAA Tournament.)
So the surest route to extending the state of Kentucky’s NCAA Tournament streak would be for UK to take advantage of the chances it has coming up to earn marquee victories in Rupp Arena.
Alas, based on what we’ve seen from the Wildcats so far this season, there’s not ample reason for confidence they can do that. Which is why UK potentially missing the 2023 NCAA Tournament is the latest worry an agitated Big Blue Nation needs to contemplate.
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