Thursday Headlines: Kentucky Basketball now among NCAA Tournament Bubble Teams

Just a week ago, things were looking up for the Kentucky Basketball program.

The Wildcats had won 8 of 9 games, including two victories over Tennessee and a win over Arkansas. Fast-forward a week: after back-to-back losses to Florida and a reeling Georgia team, Kentucky is now on Bubble Watch, according to ESPN.

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To be fair, ESPN’s Neil Paine still thinks Kentucky is very likely to get into the tournament, but it is no longer a lock like it was a week ago.

Here’s what he had to say about Kentucky.

The Wildcats had moved into “lock” territory in the forecast models after defeating Tennessee on Feb. 7 for an eighth win in nine games. But then a pair of losses to Florida and, on Tuesday, Georgia at home, followed, dipping their odds down to 94% — still very strong, but enough to warrant further Bubble Watching. Their résumé (five Quadrant 1 wins, including three Quadrant 1A, enough to rank 27th nationally in our résumé average) is also still around sixth-best in the SEC, which projects to get nine or 10 tourney teams. So they’re comfortably above the danger zone for now. The biggest concern might be that they have the nation’s toughest remaining schedule per the BPI, with four of five games against Quadrant 1 foes (three against Quadrant 1A).

Kentucky would still be in the field if the season moved today, but looking at the remainder of the schedule, the Cats will likely need to pull out a game or two where they are underdogs to feel confident headed into Selection Sunday.

The Cats still have remaining road trips to Auburn, South Carolina, and Texas A&M, with home games against Vanderbilt and Florida.

The Georgia loss certainly stings, coming in the midst of a difficult stretch of games to end the regular season, but Kentucky has a chance to pick up some major wins during this stretch as well.

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