Kentucky has a Hall of Fame coach, the biggest and most intense fan base in the country, a backcourt featuring two future NBA Draft lottery picks and a roster otherwise loaded with five-star prospects.
Those are all good things to have.
What's not a good thing to have, though, is a 3-4 record vs. top-50 teams.
But Kentucky has that, too.
And this is why it's reasonable to suggest the Wildcats might have squandered their opportunity to be a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament when they blew a 12-point lead and lost 79-73 to Kansas on Saturday inside Rupp Arena. Because Kentucky is now 3-4 vs. top-50 KenPom teams and 3-4 vs. top-50 RPI teams. In other words, they have a losing record against the best seven teams they've played. And two of those losses have come at home. And none of those wins have come in true road games.
If Kentucky played in the ACC, this would all mostly be no big deal.
There would be plenty of opportunities remaining.
But the Wildcats play in the SEC. So they only have three more scheduled games against schools currently in KenPom's top 50 or the top 50 of the RPI. That's a problem. And what it suggests is that UK will enter Selection Sunday with, yeah, an SEC title and plenty of victories but maybe not with enough quality wins to land on the top line once the NCAA Tournament selection committee sorts through things.
My point: UK's body of work is suspect.
Just take a look at the Wildcats' only top-50 wins.
They needed a 47-point effort to get past North Carolina, they beat a South Carolina team at home that was missing P.J. Dozier, and their third-best win is over an Arkansas team that just got its brains beat in at Oklahoma State. Meantime, the Wildcats lost at home to UCLA and Kansas, and on the road to Louisville and unranked Tennessee. And does that look or sound like a future No. 1 seed to you?
To be clear, Kentucky will still likely win the SEC.
I'll take them in the SEC Tournament, too.
But a No. 1 seed and national title?
That seems less likely today than it did in November, if only because we're no longer projecting off of recruiting rankings, draft boards and rosters alone. There's a 21-game sample size available now, and what it says is this: Kentucky can kill bad teams and handle average teams easily. But good teams are a problem.
More often than not.