Are national experts sleeping on UK basketball? We asked about their Top 25 rankings.

For all the immediate goodwill built up by Mark Pope in his first few weeks on the job and all the accolades thrown Kentucky’s way as this 2024-25 roster has come together, the praise hasn’t necessarily been reflected in the preseason projections.

As those months-early Top 25 rankings have been posted and updated by national college basketball outlets this spring, the Wildcats have often been on the back end of them. When they’re even included at all.

With a 2024-25 roster that now sits at 12 scholarship players, Pope and his UK coaching staff have, by pretty much all accounts, overachieved in the early going, building next season’s team — quite literally — from scratch and seemingly putting together a squad capable of competing at the highest level in year one.

In a vacuum, the recruiting results have been spectacular, each new addition celebrated as a possible impact player right away, the parts making up a whole that has re-energized the Kentucky fan base and brought national attention to Pope’s roster-building efforts.

And some do have UK ranked relatively high with about five months to go until the start of the 2024-25 season.

A recent Top 25 rundown from 247Sports placed the Cats at No. 15 nationally. The Athletic’s most recent Top 25 — updated on May 30 — had Kentucky at No. 24 in the country, and that was posted just hours before Jaxson Robinson, the leading scorer for Pope at BYU last season, revealed that he had pulled his name out of the NBA draft and committed to Kentucky.

ESPN’s Way-Too-Early Top 25, which was posted the same morning, didn’t have UK in the rankings, but the Cats were mentioned fourth among the teams “next in line” for the list. ESPN analyst Jeff Borzello, in a follow-up article a few days later, said that Robinson’s commitment was enough to push Kentucky into the Top 25 (though the actual rankings have not yet been updated).

But others still have the Cats on the outside looking in.

The most recent rankings from CBS Sports and Fox Sports don’t have Kentucky listed at all. College basketball insider Jon Rothstein’s constantly updated rundown of the top 45 teams for next year has UK ranked 29th. And ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi projects UK as a 7 seed in the 2025 NCAA Tournament, putting them in the 25-28 range of the overall rankings.

The Herald-Leader reached out to several national college basketball analysts who either don’t have UK ranked or put the Cats near the bottom of their Top 25 lists. Among those who responded, the praise for Pope was universal.

“It’s kind of the ludicrous nature of the sport at the moment — that you can go from no players and no coach to the Top 25. Or, at least, to the edge of the Top 25, I guess, in my case,” Lunardi said. “It’s extraordinary. And the future would appear to be very bright.”

There were plenty of “buts,” as well, and with all the newness surrounding the UK basketball program at the moment, several of the sport’s top pundits are taking a wait-and-see approach with these Wildcats.

“I would say it’s perfectly reasonable to expect Kentucky to be good to very good,” Lunardi said. “I think thinking that they’re going to be instantly great is a reach.”

UK basketball question marks

“I’m a big fan of Mark,” were the first words out of Lunardi’s mouth when talking to the Herald-Leader on Thursday morning. The longtime ESPN analyst noted that he first met Kentucky’s new coach when he was in his first season at BYU — the 2019-20 campaign — and has closely followed his career, predicting bright times ahead for the Wildcats.

And while Lunardi does see immediate success for this Kentucky team — he’s got the Cats in that 25-28 range, after all — there are certainly some question marks.

First off, all 12 scholarship players are new to Lexington, and Robinson is the only one with any previous experience playing under Pope, who coached him the past two years at BYU.

When discussing UK’s roster, Lunardi mentioned the old Strat-O-Matic baseball board game, where players’ statistics are reflected on cards and the game unfolds as batter and pitcher cards are individually matched up against each other.

“These coaches are basically trading Strat-O-Matic cards,” Lunardi said of all the movement in the transfer portal, leading to questions of chemistry across the country. “… The cards didn’t have to get along. And pass to each other.”

He acknowledged the same could be said for dozens of other college basketball programs, though few, if any, contenders will have turnover to the degree found on Kentucky’s roster.

Lunardi confirmed that his 7 seed projection included the knowledge that Robinson would be on the team. He spoke highly of several incoming UK players, though he did have questions about how some of the guys stepping up in competition level might fare next season.

Based in Philadelphia, the bracketologist used Amari Williams — a transfer from Drexel and the three-time Coastal Athletic Association defensive player of the year — as an example.

“I saw a lot of Amari Williams. And he’s a really nice player,” Lunardi said. “I don’t know if he’s going to thrive in the SEC.”

Along those lines, Lunardi wondered aloud how longer, more athletic SEC defenders might more effectively defend Dayton transfer Koby Brea, who shot 49.8% from 3-point range last season. He stressed that Pope had signed some “really good” players.

“But they didn’t sign Zion Williamson,” Lunardi said. “There isn’t a guy that you go, ‘He’s so good’ or, ‘That duo is so good that it’s going to overcome growing pains.’ Like it’s 75-75 with a minute to go against a top-tier SEC opponent. Who’s the guy? I don’t know that yet.”

Robinson, who averaged 14.2 points per game and earned Big 12 Sixth Man of the Year honors at BYU last season, might be the most likely leading scorer for Pope’s first UK squad. A few others — Andrew Carr (Wake Forest), Kerr Kriisa (West Virginia) and Otega Oweh (Oklahoma) — averaged double-digit scoring at the high-major level last season, though none of those players played on NCAA Tournament teams.

And then there’s the league that Kentucky will be playing in.

Kentucky’s tough schedule

Lunardi has 11 SEC teams in his field of 68 for next year’s tournament. Alabama is No. 1 nationally in some early rankings. Auburn, Arkansas, Florida, Tennessee and Texas A&M are often included in the top 20, with others under national consideration.

Add non-conference games against preseason top 10 teams like Duke and Gonzaga — along with Louisville, Ohio State and possibly one or two others in the national rankings — and UK’s final schedule is certain to be a difficult one.

“It sure seems like the SEC is riding a wave that is peaking,” Lunardi said. “And if there were multiple SEC teams in the Final Four next year, I don’t think anybody would bat an eye. But Kentucky wouldn’t be favored to be one of them today. …

“And it could be that the fit is so great, and the culture is so great, and Mark is so great that they bypass all of that. And newness isn’t a negative. But more often than not, it is. And that’s what my numbers reflect.”

No one polled by the Herald-Leader sounded like they’d be particularly surprised if Pope does put together a season that exceeds their current expectations, especially with so many seemingly good fits for his offensive system coupled with players who have excelled defensively in the past.

“I have Kentucky in my top 35 right now — but not quite inside the Top 25 And 1,” Parrish told the Herald-Leader. “That said, I certainly don’t think it’s crazy for somebody to have the Wildcats ranked based on the roster Mark has assembled. He’s done a nice job, re-energized the fan base and created, in a matter of months, what should be an NCAA Tournament team in year one. I’m eager to see how it all comes together. My prediction is that it’ll go well.”

Rothstein was equally complimentary of Pope’s immediate efforts while voicing many of the same concerns as Lunardi and others.

“Mark Pope and his staff have done a tremendous job building Kentucky’s roster on short notice,” he said. “The biggest question I have is how the roster meshes together. None of these players have ever played together before. And unlike other teams in the transfer portal era, not a single player on the roster played for Kentucky last season.”

Rothstein also wants to see how some of UK’s promising additions adapt to their new team, specifically mentioning the SEC transition of Williams and Oklahoma State transfer Brandon Garrison, the Wildcats’ two incoming centers.

“Amari Williams is a terrific prospect, but he played in the CAA last season and there will be an adjustment,” he said. “Brandon Garrison played on a team that didn’t make the NCAA Tournament at Oklahoma State. Other players in the rotation — Koby Brea and Lamont Butler — are going from the Atlantic 10 and the Mountain West to the SEC, which could be a 9-10 bid league in 2025.

“I love the potential of Kentucky’s offense, especially its ability to shoot the basketball, but I need to see tangible results in order to put this team among the Top 25 teams in the country.”

Obviously, such results won’t be possible until November.

In the first 14 years of the John Calipari era, the Wildcats were never ranked worse than 11th in the Associated Press preseason Top 25. Last year, the Cats came in at No. 16 on that list, perhaps a sign of voters growing wary of Calipari’s often-young and, sometimes, ultimately overrated teams.

It’s looking like Pope’s first UK team is going to be rated even lower than that at the beginning of the 2024-25 season. And the Cats appear likely to end up in the middle of the pack of the SEC preseason rankings.

That’s no knock on Pope or the team he’s assembled — a group of talented players who came together remarkably quickly and have tremendous upside as a collective unit. It’s simply a sign of the times in Kentucky’s conference and college basketball as a whole.

And until the games are played, many of those watching from afar will clearly be taking a cautious approach.

“In the old days, to make the kind of buzz that he’s made and generate the kind of talent, you instantly go to the top of the league,” Lunardi said. “Well, I mean, look at Alabama. Look at Arkansas. Look at Auburn. Look at Florida. Look at Tennessee. And I’m just going alphabetically.

“So it’s not a guarantee of anything, except that you’re going to have enough talent to compete. Whether that talent becomes a Final Four team or a Sweet 16 team — nobody knows that.”

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